Bread and Circuses

The Indiana University Student Association’s 2013-14 budget is in.

Three-fifths of the $500,000 IUSA receives each year is going to its Funding Board, the student panel that approves funding requests submitted by student organizations. And that’s fantastic.

As for the rest of the money? That is a very different story.

As in years past, this year IUSA is spending half of the working budget its administration receives on subscriptions to USA Today and the New York Times for the Campus Readership Program.

Here at the IDS, we’re all about keeping the fine tradition of print journalism alive.

But let’s be real.

Students today get much of their news from news websites or social media. IUSA spending half of its budget on a service few to no students use is outright wasteful.

Academic departments and residence halls, the real beneficiaries of the service, should be the ones covering the cost so that nearly $100,000 in Student Fee money can be freed and actually repurposed for those who pay it.

Sky-high textbook prices, a pattern of sexual assault on campus, hazing in the Greek community, and an overly bureaucratic university apparatus, eroding any semblance of college affordability.

An administration hesitant to transform student input into concrete policy are all areas where freed money could be put to work.

But the ticket elected to office instead ran on campaign promises as out of touch as having what amounts to an Applebee’s in the Union, bringing back handles to tailgates and, of course, executive salaries for themselves.

One of the more concrete proposals of the ticket, the emergency tuition fund, did not seem to be factored into the budget for this year.

Though this is not clear, since the official budget proposal was nowhere to be found on IUSA’s website, which has not been updated since March.

Culture of Care seems to be the only thing going for IUSA. The initiative aims to bring awareness and encourage a culture of well-being for students.

How does bringing back handles to tailgates encourage Culture of Care? We’re not sure.

But around $54,000 will be allocated this year to existing initiatives, including Culture of Care.

We would encourage IUSA to expand this initiative by emphasizing marketing for the Lifeline Law that so many students are unfamiliar with.

Increased student awareness of the law could literally save lives this year and in the years to come.

But what’s most desperately needed from IUSA is its original purpose, which is to represent students.

Last year IU on Strike showed the deep discontent among a large segment of the student population with the direction the university is heading.

And we are likely to see similar attitudes again.

What we need now is a decisive and democratic student government centered on voicing the concerns of its student population to top administrators.

We need actual representation.

But based on what’s in and what isn’t in the budget, it seems we’ll be paying for a student government that unfortunately more resembles a student council tasked with spending monies on T-shirts with slogans like “Consent Is Sexy,” rather than an institution charged with representing more tahn 40,000 Indiana University students.

­— opinion@idsnews.com
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