Editor’s note: The word limit has been waived on this letter to maintain the intent of its author.
The Aug. 31 Viewpoint column “ASG in need of serious reform” is filled with factual errors and still somehow manages to miss the point: the group’s structure doesn’t need reform, its leadership simply needs to be held accountable.
When N.C. State won the UNCASG presidency in April 2008, I led the effort to force UNCASG to operate more like us. The UNCASG Constitution was rewritten from scratch with language taken straight from our Student Body Constitution.
We cut the president’s stipend by 30 percent and put new rules in place weakening the power of the president, empowering the group’s 68 delegates instead in a fashion similar to our Student Senate. I also made more than 115 visits to the 17 UNC institutions during my two terms — more than five a month, every month, for 22 consecutive months.
Those are just three of the dozens of reforms enacted between 2008 and 2010. Those reforms produced an all-time record level of participation (despite your inaccurate claim of “three years of backlash [since 2007]), a privately-funded advocacy trip to Washington attended by more than 40 students, (despite your inaccurate claim the trip was merely “attempt[ed]”) and the repeal of the N.C. General Assembly’s 8 percent student tax in both 2009 and 2010 (despite your inaccurate claim that the organization is “ineffective”).
That’s not even touching the other areas of your column, such as your citation to a former ASG president’s assault conviction — when the charge against him was actually dismissed by the judge during his jury trial — and your quoting of a 2009 Viewpoint column — that was itself blasted for factual errors.
If students are dissatisfied with the current UNCASG administration, the solution is to take over the organization. Our delegates should be making the policy proposals they want to see, advocating for their adoption and holding the leadership’s collective feet to the fire along the way.
I recognize doing so will require actual effort, but bleating about the need for more “reform” is a lazy man’s solution that doesn’t actually fix anything; the tools are already in place, the only question is whether N.C. State’s delegation has the intestinal fortitude to use them.
