The executive vice president's bill evolution

For once, the tension from recent ASG meetings didn't stem from battles over dollars and cents. Instead, the rift between Executive Vice President Matt Bogusz, his bill and his committee members was the source of contention.

"I wouldn't call it tension, I would call it love," the Weinberg junior said.

A newly submitted group executive accountability bill sponsored by four executive committee members will be further amended next week. It will be the third week in a row the senate will discuss accountability of its group executives, or members of the executive committee who oversee and audit student groups.

Bogusz presented a similar bill last week that proposed quarterly evaluations of executives to allow senators to make an informed decision when electing members to the executive committee.

“The only power I have as executive vice president to remove someone from committee comes if a committee member doesn’t show up to two meetings,” Bogusz said when presenting the bill in the Feb. 13 Senate meeting. “If I have the worst group executive in the whole wide world, and they show up to every meeting, nothing can be done.”

Although the bill would not give Bogusz the power to remove members, Bogusz said his bill would give student groups, who will make these evaluations, their "check" to the Associated Student Government. The new bill, submitted by Weinberg freshmen Jonathan Green and Claire Lew, Weinberg sophomore Patrick Dawson and Weinberg senior Steve Gorodetskiy supports creating such evaluations but changes the structure of Bogusz's original bill.

Although both bills try to increase the transparency of group executives, the two bear striking differences. It was these differences that split members of Bogusz’s executive committee; many of them argued for the tabling of Bogusz’s bill, four of whom presented the new one Wednesday night.

The bill’s differences rest in reviewers' anonymity and whether such evaluations should be mandatory.

Senate members, including executive committee members, criticized the degree of anonymity provided in Bogusz’s bill.

With his bill, evaluations would be anonymous in such a way that individuals who completed the evaluations would not be identified. However, the student group’s name would be attached to the evaluation. Senators pointed out that evaluations would only be sent to group presidents and treasurers, which could potentially identify the person providing the evaluation.

The new bill's text says the process is "completely anonymous" with neither the individual nor student group's name will be visible on the evaluation itself in order to "honestly evaluate the service that (the) Group Executive has provided."

The other criticism of Bogusz's bill was that such evaluations would not be compulsory. Although Bogusz later said he would be open to amending the bill to make the evaluation mandatory, he said the evaluations should serve more as a tool than an obligation.

"In my experience, things that are mandatory don't go over very well," he said. "Making things mandatory makes people angry and resentful."

The new bill would mandate all student groups to complete such evaluations although no consequences were laid out in the bill for student groups that default on submitting the evaluations.

"We're trying to maximize transparency," said Lew, one of the bill's presenters.


—ALICE TRUONG