Young Cites Local Woes For USSA Absenteeism

In an article in last week's issue of The Daily Tar Heel, Student Body President Justin Young announced problems with scheduling and interest prevented any UNC students from attending as representatives of the UNC-system Association of Student Governments, a member of USSA.

The announcement came as a surprise to Congress members, who set aside funds last semester to help send seven students to the conference. In a July 19 message to the Congress listserv, Rep. Elmarie Bodes, Dist. 7, asked what would happen to those funds.

"I'm confused," Bodes wrote.

Young responded with a message to Congress explaining that "due (to) the timing of the situation and the immediate planning that was necessary it was tough to handle, and (sending representatives) became a lot more costly than initially expected."

He wrote that the executive branch was recently forced to recognize the impossibility of sending students to the conference, due to declining interest since the money was appropriated. The money will be returned to Student Congress' coffers.

"We could see it would not be necessary to take the money, so we decided to give it back," Young said Tuesday.

"We were unable to (send a delegation) because of the lack of planning that went into the setup of the trip."

Young was able to use funds from other sources to help senior Erica Smiley, who serves on the USSA board of directors, represent UNC at the conference.

But he said his cabinet decided not to use any of the funds appropriated from Congress.

"We didn't feel like it was responsible on our part to use Congress' money if we weren't going to send an entire delegation," he said.

The USSA is a national student organization whose goals include bringing student issues to national legislators. The organization has come under fire at UNC recently for including general left-wing goals in its objectives, not just issues directly affecting students or education.

The conference, which will focus on setting the USSA's agenda for the coming year, aims to bring together students from across the country to organize grass-roots lobbying campaigns, according to the conference's official program.

Young said one factor keeping students away from the conference, held held in Milwaukee, Wis., from July 22 until this Sunday, is the large number of pressing concerns for the administration at home, such as battling proposed tuition increases.

"Ultimately, (the conference) wasn't one of our top priorities," Young said.

"(But) in the future we would hope that we could have a better understanding of USSA."

Geoff Wessel can be reached

at vrooom@email.unc.edu.