Minority Students fight to keep Umbrella Organization’s in USG

As the semester nears summer break, classes speed up to cover lost ground, leaving students scrambling to keep up with essays and exams, which pepper their schedules like tasteless sprinkles oozing down the side of a melting ice cream cone. As students struggle to make time for summer fun with their college friends before the fading school year takes most of the campus population with it, institutions at SIU contend with a surge of controversies and last-minute policy changes, hastily heaped atop their own “cones.” The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) is no exception.

On Tuesday, USG met in Shryock Auditorium as usual, with nothing out of the ordinary on the agenda, which is always available on USG’s website, only to bring the meeting to a screeching halt after completing its initial startup procedures and presenting dramatic alterations to the body’s constitution. The amendment proposal would increase the requirements for becoming an Umbrella Organization by mandating a minimum level of registered student organizations (RSOs) to qualify, endangering the status of several already existent umbrella organizations, including the Saluki Rainbow Network (SRN) and the Hispanic Student Council (HSC), which fell under the 10 (or 7 in an alternative amendment presented) RSO requirement for continued Umbrella Organization status.

Despite the failure of USG to put the proposed amendment in the agenda for the meeting, a large group of rather displeased students gathered to argue against the proposed change, which could reduce the number of funds SRN and HSC are able to request.

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“I’ve got issues, firstly, with the fact of how last minute this is we didn’t get to read the bill until the meeting started. There was no way we could have shown the agenda of anyone to talk about this,” said Isaac Ludington, former vice president of Finance for USG as well as former president of the Saluki Rainbow Network. “And it wasn’t advertised that there would be a gov. docs meeting. That’s my first frustration. My second is I worry this is a solution in search of a problem. The reason umbrellas exist is that we recognize that certain groups, certain types of events, are valuable. Not just because of the number of members that will go but because they are essential to our campus by nature of what they are. And I feel putting a number on that cheapens that.”

Ludington is currently a staff writer at the Daily Egyptian, who attended the meeting independently of that role.

As Umbrella Organizations supervising and advocating for the interests of distinct groups in the student population, the limit of SRN and HSC’s funding levels is much higher than the funding an RSO could achieve. Umbrella Organizations can request up to 20,000 dollars yearly, whereas RSOs must make requests on an event by event basis, dealing with rigorous regulations and other red tape that Umbrella Organizations assist with. Especially during the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic during the last few years, Umbrella Organizations improved the durability of their constituent RSOs during a time in which many RSOs simply ceased to exist.

“As president of SRN during COVID trying to rebuild the org, we had two of our RSOs that needed heavy work, so we didn’t have time to put in fundraising for our groups or those who needed that operational money we had,” Ludington said. “Without that, they would not have happened and there would have been no events on campus at that time for members of our community, because there was no LGBTQ resource coordinator at the time. We were the ones able to open events because USG recognized the special need for our community on campus as our umbrella stands. If we lose that we’re losing that recognition and that is something I think is valuable to keep in a time when trans rights are under attack.”

Specifically, the subject of the revisions proposed by USG is that it is a part of USGs governing documents, second in authority only to the constitution.

The section that caused the most controversy listed the following as requirements for Umbrella Organizations: “List of at least 10 Component RSO’s or Meet with OSE and the VP of Student Affairs to discuss Non-Inclusion to the RSO Requirement. Final Decisions made by OSE and VP of Student Affairs are FINAL and cannot be appealed. RSOs Can only fall under 3 2 Umbrella Organizations, Subject to Change.”

Organizations which failed to comply with this standard would lose their status as Umbrella Organizations after two semesters of non-compliance. If they are voted in unaltered, the new requirements would take place next semester. Umbrellas Orgs unable to comply would have the option of becoming Constituency RSOs, which the document defines as representing entire constituency groups on campus, such as Asian Americans. Under this status, organizations would keep their seats in USG, but would lose much of their financial and planning benefits and, technically, the management abilities an Umbrella Org has over its subsidiary RSOs. Notably, Umbrella Orgs have the ability to represent a collection of RSOs to administration, with no mention of this right for Constituency RSOs. In addition to this, rather than having a funding cap of $20,000, constituency groups are only guaranteed to be reimbursed for office expenses.

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“I apologize if I sound like I’m emotional. I have been, not amping up, but trying to be ready for this amendment specifically because this right now is not gonna work,” said Johnathan Crane, a prominent senator of SRN. “Even when you proposed seven there is no way SRN, a queer based group, is going to get more than maybe 4 underneath them. That’s not because we don’t do great things. We do so many things. We do so many things that are not just big events, we don’t do huge events, what we do is we do outreach, we make sure people have connections when they need them, because on this campus, we still feel the harassment. We still deal with death threats. And the reason why I bring this up is that I need people to understand the SRN perspective.”

Crane brought up recent votes in neighboring states on forced conversion therapy for transition.
“While that doesn’t seem like that affects here, it does. It makes people scared to come out. We do not wear our identities on our sleeves. Sometimes the only place that can have representation is SRN.”

The reasoning from the Governing Documents Committee was not entirely clear in the meeting, but it was briefly explained that the bill was to prevent groups from taking advantage of Umbrella Organization status to make larger requests for funds while only distributing them to a few organizations. According to Crane, the SRN only used 3,300 dollars from USG for a full academic year, well short of the 20,000 dollar cap, money that created a community for hundreds of students.

“Yes, we should have constituencies [RSOs] underneath us and we do, we have four and we have to for a very long time because COVID was hard on us, and we got an additional two at the start of this semester,” Crane said. “We need to be here in order to have a safe space for people to come out. We should not expect them to come out just because we need more members.”

Crane noted SRN does not have anyone beside them aside from USG.

“We do not take sponsorships because usually we are making donations. Because we are a community outreach. We make sure that people are in touch. And it’s not just for the worry of right now. It is for the worry of the future and our sustainability.”

HSC, which currently only has one RSO underneath it, was also vocal in its opposition, with some members at the meeting even questioning the intentions of USG leadership in the heat of the moment. However, despite undeniable tension, the meeting’s atmosphere remained cool-headed and conciliatory.

“In my opinion, I don’t think it’s that we were targeted, it’s just that they don’t understand the numbers,” said Alberto Juarez, vice president of HSC. “I will say as Senator Berry said that it was all statistics. If it was all statistics, having seven RSO would be difficult and considering that the Latino and Hispanic population is much smaller than the Caucasian and Black population it is, I’m not sure why he didn’t consider how small we are and how even fewer of us are going to take on the roles of being in an RSO. So it’s just more like they just don’t understand how it is to run a small group.”

Many students criticized the introduction of the amendment as odd, given that USG already has the ability to grant funding requests on a case by case basis, making it difficult for organizations to gain more funds than they require.

According to Max Berry, the USG senator responsible for writing up the amendment, USG’s reasoning for having the governing documents changed had nothing to do with funding levels.

“I mean, our biggest thing was that under the current guidelines that were in place…it didn’t give you any kind of stipulation of how many RSOs you have to have to be an Umbrella,” Berry said. “I was asked to look at what would be a number. It was more there for a guideline for individuals trying to become an umbrella organization, because when you look at a lot of USG paperwork, it’s very vague. And as a student, as a student leader, looking at vague information and trying to get down to the answers is very difficult. So it was less trying to cut back on spending, and more trying to give a tangible step to reach for people to focus on.”

Berry said he has been on the funding board for USG previously and knows the importance of what the funds accomplish.

“I’m very glad that we have organizations on campus that do lots of good work and spend the money they need from USG, but it was like for me, it wasn’t a money thing,” Berry said.

Instead, his efforts were focused on a technical correction of the governing document itself which he said, “could do and look a lot better”.

Berry’s first version of the document had the non-inclusion clause with the RSO requirement and minority student groups in mind. Under this clause, SRN and the other organizations could have persisted as Umbrella organizations due to their unique situations.

“There is room for like, like openness, of course, but you want individuals to understand like, these are the standards you have in place and we want those standards to be easy to understand and easy to comprehend,” Berry said. “So when we’re like, giving them feedback on how to do it better, we can tell them oh, here’s point A and point B in this document that’ll help you be like help you do this better. It’s less like, ‘Oh, we’re trying to like, get rid of these people.’ No, we want to show them like, ‘here are our rules. And here’s how we can help you better.’”

Eventually, as debate continued past the meetings allotted hours, the Senate voted to lower the required RSOs to only four, qualifying the SRN, and placing Umbrella status within reach of the HSC.

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