Our View

As you watch the clowns, acrobats, jugglers and magicians, you begin to appreciate the delightful chaos. The tricks, the illusions and the showboating all can be entertaining under the big top.

But this isn’t a show. It’s SGA, and they handle your money.

USA’s Student Government Association held its budget meeting Aug. 31, and that’s the best way to describe it: a circus, except without the precise execution of a traveling show.

The SGA members – who handle hundreds of thousands of dollars of your activity fees – seemed to be stumbling over themselves all night, showcasing either a negligent disregard for the details or a gross level of incompetence.

When Army ROTC Ranger Challenge was recommended $0 by the Appropriations Committee, no one knew why. Neither Treasurer Michael Baldwin nor Appropriations Chair Sean Ramsey seemed to know what was going on.

First, they said it was the fact that they didn’t have enough Jag numbers on their form. Apparently, they had requested 40 sets of uniforms yet only gave 25 names.

But that was ruled out.

Then, they thought it was just voted down. A group of Appropriations Committee members indicated they voted against it.

In the end, though, they decided it was just a typo, although it’s still unclear what happened. But they gave Ranger Challenge $2,000 anyway.

The SGA hit another snag when Senator Pro-Tem Ashley Guy made a motion to adjust the budgeted amounts for appropriations and co-sponsorships. After Guy made the motion multiple times, Baldwin challenged the idea that the Senate could even change his recommended budget.

Eventually, though, they looked in the SGA Constitution and found, lo and behold, the Senate has the exclusive right to approve the budget. Yes, they racked their brains and had to discover one of the most basic principles upon which SGA functions.

Either the SGA truly didn’t know what they were doing, or someone wasn’t honest. Regardless, it’s not a good sign.

As if incompetence weren’t enough, SGA then gave away your money without a second thought to fairness, much less justice.

Despite the heavy criticism it has drawn in the past, SGA didn’t bat an eye at throwing $10,000 at five ROTC Clubs again this year. Baldwin specifically addressed this in an interview with The Vanguard over the summer:

“We will do our best to make sure that groups don’t ‘double-dip,’ or get approved for multiple allocations under different names when they are the same basic group,” Baldwin said.

Even Guy agreed, saying ROTC had “gotten out of hand.”

But this wasn’t even addressed in the meeting, much less was anything done about it.

Further, SGA spent nearly $20,000 on T-shirts this year, making up more than 20 percent of their total fall appropriations. That’s right: SGA spends 20 percent of its budget buying T-shirts – referred to as “uniforms” – for student organizations.

This wouldn’t be so bad if Baldwin hadn’t specifically campaigned on reducing T-shirt expenditures in the candidates’ forum. But, hey, he’s in office now, so why would he need to fulfill campaign promises?

But they didn’t stop there.

Some SGA senators, most notably Guy, Allied Health Sen. Paige Perry and Education Sen. Greg Youngblood, grilled the Anime Club and Society for Strategy Gamers, asking if the money they requested was going to “educational purposes.”

Never mind that nowhere is the SGA required to give money only for education, but in the face of wasting money on T-shirts and food for parties, they had the nerve to question these clubs for not spending money on “education.”

For example, when the Society for Strategy Gamers requested SGA funding to rent a room to play “Magic: The Gathering,” Guy interrogated them about what it was for and how it was “educational,” even though she didn’t hesitate to give Chi Omega, a sorority, $2,000 for a room rental without question.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she, along with a few other senators, are in Chi Omega.

Although these two clubs’ requests were approved in the end and only a small group of senators questioned the funding, the bias those senators showed toward these groups reveals a trend toward narrow-mindedness, a tendency that, if not quickly corrected, could lead to larger problems.

After such a miserable performance, the SGA should be disappointed, or at least a little hesitant to uncork the champagne.

But they weren’t. In fact, they couldn’t hold in their excitement after their meeting.

Baldwin said, in a Facebook status: “Michael Baldwin has faith in his Senate! Here’s to fairness and wisdom tonight!”

If this is “fairness and wisdom,” we’d hate to see what Baldwin, much less the rest of the SGA, thinks is irresponsibility.