Highlander Newspaper

Issue date: 2/2/10 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Michael Trias

ASUCR's longstanding involvement with conferences and some of the problems associated with that are well-known. In past years, ASUCR members have come under fire for expenses related to University of California Student Association and United States Student Association conferences, even as other participants in the ASUCR delegations to such events have gained valuable lobbying, political and educational experiences as a result of their involvement. Just last week, some of the problems related to ASUCR's management and funding of conferences were highlighted.

The matter that brought this to light was the cutting of ASUCR funds for the Western Regional LGBTQ Conference, an annual conference attended for the past several years by members of the UCR lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community and their allies. In the past, ASUCR sponsored the UCR delegation, covering the costs of its participation, but this year, budget problems associated with dwindling reserve funds prompted the funding cut. ASUCR has said that the elimination of funding for the conference was due to the fact that it is not sponsored by the University of California Student Association, a student lobbying and advocacy group (of which ASUCR is a member) which sponsors conferences on student issues in Sacramento and Washington DC.

At a Senate meeting last Tuesday, ASUCR senators and students angry about the cuts discussed the matter in the Senate chambers, with various students expressing a sense of having been "slapped in the face" by the Senate. Accusations of homophobia and an extended discussion of the lack of effective communication between ASUCR and UCR's LGBT Resource Center ensued. Senators explained that there was a similar funding cut to the Women of Color Conference and said that LGBT students were not being targeted unfairly, but that funding was being uniformly cut to all non-UCSA conferences. The end of the encounter saw a tentative promise by one senator to bring up the matter of the conference in future and to discuss restoring partial funding for it.

This recent episode and past episodes show there is a need for ASUCR to provide more transparency and consistency in its funding and arrangement of conferences. Certainly, sending students to attend events and gatherings so that they can engage with other student delegations and discuss important issues, such as college affordability and civil rights, is worth the expenditure. Nevertheless, given the fact that ASUCR funds come from students themselves, students should have a clearer sense of where their money is going.

The fact that many interested students and even some ASUCR senators themselves did not know of the cut to the Western Regional LGBTQ Conference until very recently is an indicator that there must be more effective and direct communication on this matter between ASUCR and student groups. Additionally, where funding is tight, there should be more consistent and equal cuts to conference funding. Targeting some conferences for full cuts while giving others only partial cuts is not justifiable or fair.

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