TO THE EDITOR:
In his op-ed piece Oct. 29, Shared governance requires steadfast dedication, professor Stephen Leonard argued that students should not ask what the Association of Student Governments can do for UNC, but what UNC can do for ASG.
However, the most pressing question is really what ASG has done to serve the UNC system, and aside from improving the financial prospects of some of the students who receive its stipends, it is hard to see what it has done.
Only 9 percent of ASG’s budget is spent on advocacy, in comparison to 42 percent on stipends for its officers.
It has not even provided UNC-CH and other schools legitimate “seats at the table” to offer their perspectives, as at the last meeting the association refused to even consider the resolution introduced by Student Body President Lambden and the SBPs of N.C. State University and Appalachian State University.
The efforts to reform ASG over the last several years, particularly by reducing the large stipends paid to its officers, have been similarly torpedoed.
If ASG denies its own constituent institutions the right to express their positions at its own meetings,
it is hard to see how it can express the positions of the entire UNC system to the Board of Governors and the N.C. General Assembly.
Why student government leaders are those who are most convinced of ASG’s lack of credibility is easy to explain — they’re the ones who’ve actually been to ASG’s meetings.
Will Stelpflug ’16
Student Congress
Rules & Judiciary Chairman
