By Stephen George
Task force to assess ACCESS
The semester’s final Student Government Association Senate meeting ended decisively last Tuesday, as senators agreed to form a task force whose main objective will be to provide information to an admittedly ill-informed Senate concerning Adult Commuter Center-Evening Student Services (ACCESS).
The Senate decided with overwhelming majority to follow through with the task force, a maneuver that was suggested several months ago but not employed until now. The task force will be assembled by SGA Executive Vice President J.P. Garcia and is guaranteed to include ACCESS Director Barbara King and at least one representative of the Office of Student Affairs.
The task force will be required to submit its findings to the Senate by the March 2003 session.
After providing ample campus fodder for the past four months, the ACCESS discussion has shifted from concerns over the SGA’s ability to continue funding it to SGA’s role as an employer to King and program assistant Donna Holmes.
“SGA has to try and find a form that works for SGA,” said SGA president Chris Marlin, alluding to the possibility that the university could pick up the cost of the pair’s salaries. “We don’t need to be an employer.”
SGA has maintained that if the university were to take over cost of the salaries, the money currently budgeted for ACCESS could still be used for improvements to the center.
Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Denise Gifford urged senators to support the task force, saying that there was “no good plan” for ACCESS on the table, and adding that “we [the university] will bring in the consultants for you.”
Gifford reminded the senators that “your role is to advocate for students as a whole. I’m asking you to use thoughtfulness and deliberation,” emphasizing that voting then was “not an adult way to handle the situation.”
Al Herring, acting Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and faculty advisor to the SGA, accused Marlin and others of lying to the Senate and the student body at large.
“You’ve been led down a path all this semester,” Herring said, following up a student’s comment that Marlin has lied about SGA’s budget. “You don’t have all the information. Be very careful now. You’ve been given information that is untrue.”
Herring did not elaborate on what false information had been provided to the Senate, nor did he specifically designate those responsible in the SGA’s central administration, although he did say that “consistently, this SGA has tried to shut off dialogue.”
Many senators spoke out on behalf of ACCESS as well, including arts and sciences senator Curtis Nelson. “ACCESS should be left as is,” he said. “There haven’t been any strides to improve what ACCESS is doing.”
Law school senator Tony Dabit introduced a proposal for the dissolution of the ACCESS center in its current state, which provided the centerpiece for debate at the three-hour session. The proposal, killed by a majority vote, advocated the creation of two separate funds. One would use two-thirds of the current SGA ACCESS budget, roughly $60,000, to create Student Resource Centers at various locations on campus. The centers would be modeled after the current ACCESS center, which would be renamed the SGA Student Resource Center and would retain its position in 105 Davidson Hall. The remaining one-third of the fund would go to a childcare services program aimed at nontraditional commuter students.
