Intellectual Destitution
Feb. 16th, 2005 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aggienaut The Model United Nations club at UC Davis (MUN) recently received $750 from Club Finance Council (CFC) to partially subsidize the upcoming UC Berkeley MUN Conference (UCBMUNC '05). In order to qualify for this money, MUN officers had to convince SPAC that they needed the money.
During this conference, the MUN officers have planned a "team dinner" whereupon the 37 participants from Davis will eat at a $40 per person restaurant, and it will be subsidized by MUN club money down to $20 a plate (a $740 total subsidation).
Club officers emphasize that this money is not the CFC money. I stated that the argument that there is no relationship between the two sources of money is the kind of financial knavery I'd expect to only hear only during an ASUCD Senate meeting.
[Poll #438856]
When it was discussed at the meeting I grilled the officers but they were recalcitrant on the subject. Shortly thereafter we were served up the topic of "sovreignty" to practice debating. After numerous people loudly grumbled that it was a boring topic, I suggested that maybe we practice debating by using the "Team Dinner" as a topic. Secretary General Myung pointedly ignored the suggestion. I found it quite distinctly shady.
In addition to it being in all likelihood grave misuse of CFC funds (in that we obviously didn't need the CFC money), I object to this because the dinner is STILL way out of my price range.
I have an appointment with the Club Finance Council Program Director tomorrow morning at 9am, at which point I shall probably file a formal complaint and the SPAC people will contact the MUN officers to establish a hearing.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 02:13 am (UTC)On the other hand, there doesn't appear at this point to be any covering up of the evil activities, so perhaps shady is the wrong word. Perhaps the right word is actually: WRONG, as in "It is WRONG to solicit donations to pay for expensive dinners."
Shades of Shade
Date: 2005-02-17 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 04:33 am (UTC)I've been enlightened
Date: 2005-02-17 05:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-17 05:35 am (UTC)The Model U.N. team did nothing wrong
Date: 2005-03-03 10:12 pm (UTC)The contrary view would create a situation where the first $750 that the club generated through fundraising would REDUCE dollar-for-dollar the monies that the club was eligible for from CFC. This logic and its creation of disincentives to fundraise is totally ludicrous!!
If CFC felt that the functions of the Model U.N. team were unimportant to the University, or that the Student Programs and Activities Center did not want to support the Model U.N. team, then they could not fund the team because it was a bad Student Program/Activity that did not warrant any funding (and CFC would be hard-pressed to make that argument).
If CFC felt that Model U.N. was simply too flush with money to give it any, then they should have WRITTEN STANDARDS that lay out the financial strata at which organizations are simply "too rich" to be eligible for funding.
CFC's demand to have the full payment returned and the subsequent resignation of the ELECTED (and from what I understand, superb) Secretary-General of the UCD Model United Nations team is overaggressive, unfair, and bad policy.
If students did not want "their" money (i.e. team money) being spent on the subsidized dinner, then perhaps they should have either convinced the team leadership it was a bad idea, or convinced the general membership it was a bad idea, or attempted to negotiate with the Secretariat that the member's ($30) share of the subsidy be used for some other item. Even if the member lost in all of these attempts, sometimes your idea is not the winning one, and when votes are taken, sometimes your side loses. Deal.
All of that said, I appreciate Kris' true zeal for honesty and integrity in the organization and his enthusiasm to see the team grow to new heights and capabilities. I think his intentions may have been good, but the means by which he attempted to secure his goals was premature and directly contradictory to those goals. In the end, MUN is PERCEIVED as publicly disgraced and PERCEIVED as having defrauded CFC, which I do not believe to be the case.
I urge CFC to give BACK to money to the team. I also urge Catharine Myung to reassume her position. Furthermore, I implore CFC to do a self analysis about its bullying tactics, threats, and the effects that they have on disempowered students.
I would appreciate your further comment and criticism of my ideas, and if I have ANY facts wrong, I urge the reader to please let me know.
Together in MUN,
David J. Simon
Re: The Model U.N. team did nothing wrong
Date: 2005-03-04 03:48 am (UTC)Re: The Model U.N. team did something wrong
Date: 2005-03-06 05:03 am (UTC)"Full payment returned" might be either erronious or misleadingly stated. To my knowledge MUN had to give nothing back to CFC.
To my knowledge CFC did not demand Catherine's resignation. I doubt they even suggested it, though they were very irritated at specifically the fact that she was still not listed as an officer.
The important thing, as I mentioned in another comment, is that SPAC simply did not have the authority to demand anything. The only threat they could make was to do a formal audit of MUN. It is my understanding that they did say if the dinner situation wasn't rectified by the following Tuesday they would conduct a formal audit. Even this though should not be an excessive inconvenience at best, and only truly "harmful" to MUN if there really is something to hide.
So again, CFC did not reclaim any money from MUN, I don't believe they asked for Catherine's resignation, and the only thing they had the authority to do was do a financial audit of MUN; and for any ramifications of that the burden of proof would be on them to prove there was wrongdoing.
Re: The Model U.N. team did something wrong
Date: 2005-03-06 07:52 am (UTC)And there you go.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-04 07:04 am (UTC)The Team Dinner
Secondly I am an officer (the CEO in fact*) of two organizations myself, both of which I do a great deal of work for - pushing the limits of my available time. That I am not involved in a great deal of work with MUN should certainly not be seen as implying that I have time to look into restaurant arrangements for them.
I don't know who you talked to about assertaining that $20 was what the team could afford, but evidence from the traditional dinner at AMWEST indicates it would be about half a dozen people, mostly officers, and I don't see any appreciable reason why more people would be able to afford it in this circumstance than at AMWEST.
The fact of the matter is if it HAD been put to a vote before the membership, I would not have gotten involved. As it went though, I saw the officers embarking on an activity which would put club funds disproportionately to use for the more affluent of the club, and that the body of the membership (including most of the less affluent of the club) had had absolutely no ability to weigh in on this.
*well I was at the time, we've had elections in AGASA since and I have assumed a less involved roll</font
Re: The Team Dinner
Date: 2005-03-04 09:34 pm (UTC)oh wait, catharine would.
MUN
Date: 2005-03-05 09:58 am (UTC)As a general rule, the CFC is an absolute waste of bureaucratic space (coming in a close second to the Student Court. That's right, I said it). To assume that they would be capable of making a decision based on whatever information you offered them alarms me for a number of reasons:
1). Their penchant for political idiocy.
2). Their inefficiency in regards to everything from delegating money to exisitng.
3). Their almost certain lack of applicable information in this case.
It alarms me that you would go outside of the organization and potentially destroy the years of hard work it took to build the team over something like this (particularly if you didn't even have required time or sentiment for the team to worry about restaurant arrangements, which would have surely taken less time and effort). I expect this type of behavior from a senator, but I was, until recently, fairly certain this was beneath you. You resorted to nuclear warfare when the battle required only conventional arms, have you learned nothing in political science, history or international relations?
One glaring error as well. How the hell does a subsidy dis-proportionately benefit affluent people. Seriously man, that's just idiotic. If two people have varied levels of wealth and each receive the same subsidy, by the laws of mathematics, logic, and all things holy, the poorer of the two will gain a greater advantage. Subsidies disproportionately help the poor (unless its structured to have a minimum wealth requirement).
Finally, you're assuming the only reason (or the main reason) why a person would attend the dinner at AMWest is because they have more money. I can drive a tractor through the logical loopholes here, and here it comes. The secretariat may be disproportionately represented in an AMWest dinner because:
1) They are disproportionately interested in MUN.
2) They have greater personal ties to people who would also attend said dinner.
3) They would rather not spend an evening with a conspiracy theorist and are willing to pay 20 dollars to avoid said person.
Just because one possibility happens to support your assertions doesn't mean it's true. And if this is the type of argument you made to CFC it only shows:
1) How incapable they are of reasoning logically.
2) How presenting facts to SPAC in such a light would be unethical (lies made baby Jesus cry, half-truths gave him constipation, and unsubstantiated assertions gave him a skin rash). And if it hurt baby Jesus, you can be sure it's on the wrong side of the ethical fence.
3) How much better the world would be if Dave Simon still ran the show.
And I hereby end my rant, it's been real ladies and gentlemen. And, when in doubt, ask yourself: WWJD (What Would Janet Do?)
Re: MUN
Date: 2005-03-05 06:54 pm (UTC)As for your third point regarding AMWest, I'd much rather have dinner with a conspiracy theorist and those who cannot afford the meal than a bunch of rich kids who will stab you in the back and ruin your self-image the first chance they get.
Instead of working to fix the issues facing MUN (and there are a myriad of them), you all would rather spend your days attacking Kris on his livejournal because none of you would ever have the courage to talk to him about it personally. As for myself, I have nothing left to do with my time now that members of the club have found that an election is more important than my friendship. I didn't need to win the election, but I did need my friends. I never realized people in MUN had such little personal integrity.
You shouldn't fear SPAC or CFC if you are not doing anything wrong. It's that simple.
Kris, I believe it's your turn.
Re: MUN
Date: 2005-03-05 11:33 pm (UTC)As for SPAC and CFC, the only way you would think they are a completely benign organization is if you had never wrangled with them directly (as I did for a number of years). Seriously, SPAC, and ASUCD in general, single-handedly convinced me never to follow a career in politics.
I'm not attacking Kris, just his arguments. As a general rule I think Kris goes about things in an incredibly intelligent and insightful manner, just not in this case.
As for not talking about it personally I'm 2500 miles away in law school, which precludes this possibility. But I hope Kris knows I don't have any hostility towards him, I just expect him to handle things in the same capable manner he has done in the past. I wouldn't be as hard on people I didn't expect anything from.
Rabble rousing as always,
Shawn Foust
Re: MUN
Date: 2005-03-06 04:57 am (UTC)Re: MUN
Date: 2005-03-11 07:32 am (UTC)Anyway, you know how much I hate SPAC and CFC from all those years of fighting with them. I mean really, when they told me that MUN wasn't diverse enough and that's why we wouldn't get any money...I almost died...seriously, how can MUN not be diverse. But I digress.
So, WWJD...well, I would prostitute someone on the corner for the extra money to pay for dinner. Then we wouldn't have to bother with stupid CFC and SPAC bureaucracy. So, how about it gorgeous...do you want to be our next funraiser? I can see it now...you on the corner of Anderson and LaRue by the Arco station. So very classy!!
Say hi to Regan!
Love,
Janet
Re: MUN
Date: 2005-03-06 04:52 am (UTC)1) SPAC didn't make any decisions based on the information I gave them, except to talk to MUN officers. Incidently I believe Catherine avoided talking to them and left that to Nicole. Having heard both sides, SPAC made some recommendations -- these were not binding and the only threat SPAC made was that if MUN did not rectify the problems they say, THEN they would begin a formal hearing. I believe a formal hearing would have involved a financial audit, and would have been only harmful to MUN if the burden of proof indicated shady behaviour on the part of MUN. Basically, "going to spac" was not an inherently negative destructive act, but rather holding MUN accountable for anything underhanded they may have done. Because of the process, SPAC has is no threat to MUN unless MUN has something to hide.
2) I'm not at all suprised you view the judicial arm of student government as useless. The ASUCD government constitutes an organization with probably around 100 people who are all VERY actively involved in it (you could say they're all "officers," both in title and the amount of work and dedication they put in), and funny thing, they trust my judgement in questions such as this one.
3) Your argument about subsidies is particularly laughable. Of course subsidies help the less affluent. Well they would if they were used to lower the cost of the conference, but they weren't. It has been explicitly stated by MUN officers that they did not expect to get the $750, and when they did receive the money, they didn't use it to lower the cost of the conference, they used it for the dinner. "Subsidies disproportionately help the poor (unless its structured to have a minimum wealth requirement)." Thank you for pointing this out. Minimum wealth requirement to benefit from these subsidies: enough money to casually blow $20 on a dinner.
4) Even IF the secretariat is disproportionately represented on the team dinners because they happen to be friends with eachother, its still very shady, in fact quite arguably moreso. Now we're saying that the money isn't going to a small group of club members because they are the only ones that can afford to undertake the benefit, now we're saying the money is going to people that happen to be friends with eachother, and the 80% of the club that isn't benefitting is not benefitting because they happen not to be friends with the secretariat. I find this line of reasoning to be more alarming than the simple economic argument.
4-A) Most of the club went to the dinner at Chevys. About 20% of the club members attend dinner when it is set at $20. You're saying the reason 80% of the club isn't willing to pay the extra money isn't because they can't afford it but because they aren't friends with the Secretariat.
5) I could reproduce for you the email I sent to CFC if you want. It was little more than "MUN recently received a $750 subsidy from CFC ... at this same conference they are subsidizing half of $40 dinners for 37 people to a total of $740." I don't think I gave them a single subjective argument. They talked to me and they talked to Nicole. If they happen to support my assertions it means (A) they found my argument more convincing thant Nicole's (B) uh, yeah A is pretty much the only relevant conclusion here.