Analysis: Are ASG’s struggles unique?

As USD cuts newspapers and conceals budget, LMU and Chapman do the opposite

Anderson Haigler / Associate Editor / The USD Vista

Upon first glance, it is easy to see the similarities between Loyola Marymount University and the University of San Diego. Both are located in Southern California with pristine, palm tree-filled campuses near the Pacific Ocean. Both are private Catholic institutions with undergraduate student bodies of 6,700 and 5,900, respectively. The two schools compete against each other in athletics in the West Coast Conference. Some students who attend USD also applied to LMU, and vice versa. And, of course, they both feature extravagantly high tuition per year — $71,040 for LMU, and $67,211 for USD.

Take one look at each of the universities’ student governments, however, and the similarities seem to fade. While USD’s Associated Student Government (ASG) has been mired in more than a year’s worth of controversy and student concerns regarding their financial transparency and defunding of free newspaper access for students, LMU may not have had to weather similar issues. 

As USD students’ requests for ASG’s budget to be made public were rebuffed by senate leadership, LMU’s Associated Students (ASLMU) featured their budget prominently on their website. As Toreros watched their student leaders defund their access to high-quality journalism, ASLMU held steady — continuing to fund their constituents’ New York Times access.

A comparison of any two organizations, no matter how similar they are to each other, is likely to be flawed in one way or another. But a look at the way that ASLMU has handled similar problems to those that USD has encountered over the last year does not cast a flattering light on San Diego’s ASG. 

The current controversy regarding USD’s ASG began more than a year ago, when then-President Natasha Salgado attempted to cut the College Readership Program, which had historically provided Toreros with access to several national and local newspapers.

Salgado’s abrupt decision to do away with the subscriptions, which she justified with an Instagram poll that reportedly had less than 100 respondents, was met with confusion and dissent. The senate voted unanimously to put the decision instead to a campus-wide referendum, a motion which Salgado vetoed. The veto kicked off more than a year of controversy regarding the Program that has now stretched into current president Marion Chavarria Rivera’s tenure. 

In the year that followed the initial attempt at defunding, students’ access to newspapers gradually decreased. In response, Toreros created petitions in support of the subscriptions, receiving an amount of signatories that was more than triple the amount who responded to the Instagram poll. Students showed up at ASG meetings to voice their opinions but were often not given time to speak. After Finance Chair George Saunderson released data that showed that more than one-fifth of USD students had activated their subscriptions, some Toreros implored their government to renew the newspaper access. 

In the end, even after Vice President Greyson Taylor recommended that the digital subscriptions be refunded following a four-hour emergency deliberation, even after Taylor admitted that he had changed his mind and was in support of the program, the Senate voted to remove funding from the newspapers, leaving students without easy access to high-quality journalism for the first time in more than a decade. 

Throughout the entire process, neither Salgado nor Chavarria Rivera agreed to any interview with The USD Vista. 

One hundred and twenty-three miles up the California coast, Loyola Marymount had a similar debate regarding funding of newspaper subscriptions. Only their discussion was quick and clean. No controversy. No petitions. No student backlash. Discussion sparked a campus-wide referendum, which led to a decision being made — a conclusion that was likely representative of the student body’s wishes. 

“The (NYT access) has been here the whole time I’ve been at LMU,” ASLMU Vice President Emily Sinsky said. “It was something that we had a big discussion over, because it is so much money — it ended up being $17,000.”

Sinsky described how the high cost of the subscriptions led to an extensive discussion between the executive members of the student government on the merits of the program during their leadership team retreat. Initially, renewing the funding didn’t seem likely. 

“We kind of went into it saying ‘I don’t think students need it, I think we can allocate this funding elsewhere,’” Sinsky, an LMU senior, said. 

After lengthy deliberation, Sinsky and her colleagues came to the opposite conclusion of USD’s ASG, doing so without a year-long controversy.

“We sat there for hours outlining everything … and that’s when we decided that we wanted to maintain the precedent of having (the subscriptions), and giving that access to students. Since we had the money, we wanted to uphold that.”

ASLMU’s rationale for maintaining the funding touched on a similar concern that both USD students and faculty members shared regarding the potential loss of newspaper subscriptions — the risk of students becoming less politically informed in the publications’ absences. Though this issue did not appear to resonate with USD’s ASG, it did with their colleagues to the north at LMU.

“We decided that especially with the nature of our political climate right now, it’s something that’s important for students to have,” Sinsky added. 

Like USD’s ASG, ASLMU was concerned with usage of the digital subscriptions on their campus. So they sent out a survey to all undergraduates regarding the program, which Sinsky estimates got over 2,000 responses. 

“The majority was in favor of the program,” Sinsky said. “Most people said that they wanted to keep the New York Times subscriptions.”

And so, the subscriptions stayed. 

A small level of concern did remain at LMU regarding getting the most out of the initiative, as ASLMU’s survey found that some students either did not know that the program existed, or were confused as to how to activate their subscriptions — perhaps similar to the issues with the program at USD. ASLMU viewed that as a shortcoming to address, not grounds to cancel the access. 

“The overwhelming response was people wanted to use it, they just didn’t know about it, or didn’t know how to use it,” Sinsky said. “So we decided that if we’re going to fund it, we have to publicize it well, and make sure that students know about it and know how to use it.” 

Saba Amid is the president of the Student Government Association (SGA) at Chapman University, another similar institution to USD. The campus, which is home to 8,300 students, is 15 miles from the beach, and tuition clocks in at roughly $55,000 per year. Amid’s constituents — Chapman Panthers — have enjoyed access to the NYT through funding from SGA for the last four years.

Though Amid and her colleagues reevaluate all initiatives that they fund annually, the newspaper access has remained, largely due to SGA’s belief in the importance of the program, and that many students utilize the subscriptions. 

“A primary reason is making sure our students are well educated and well rounded and have access to quality journalism,” Amid said.

The contrast between ASLMU, Chapman’s SGA,  and USD’s ASG becomes even more stark when considering each organization’s treatment of their respective budgets. The eventual defunding of newspaper access on USD’s campus sparked calls for ASG’s budget to be made public, with senior Tyler Arden speaking multiple times at senate meetings regarding this issue.

His desire for transparency was met with skepticism and pushback. One senator asked him why he needed to see the budget. Another told him that USD students might not be capable of understanding it. Finance Chair Saunderson told Arden that at best he would receive the total sum of the budget — around $1.2 million. 

In the weeks since Arden’s request for a public budget, the Finance Committee has recommended that the budget becomes public in some shape or form — exactly how much will be disclosed to students remains unclear. But the Senate has yet to vote on the recommendation, meaning that as the first semester of this academic year winds down, Toreros are still without any details as to how their $242 fee is being spent. 

Students at LMU or Chapman have had to voice no such concerns. Nobody showed up at ASLMU’s or SGA’s meetings to ask for their budgets to be made public. They already are, and have been for at least the last three years. Two clicks on ASLMU’s website allows anybody to download their impressively detailed budget — everything from the President’s salary to the cost of apparel for ASLMU to the total cost of LMU’s annual concert. At Chapman, a sift through SGA’s website reveals all of their financial documents, and any student wanting a copy of the budget can have it emailed to them directly. 

“(Transparency) is one of the most important parts of being in student government,” Amid said. “ … we want to make sure we are spending it accurately and wisely. If somebody needed (the budget), we could totally send it to them.” 

 At LMU, Sinsky admitted that it is not the most comfortable thing to have all of her organization’s expenditures out in the open, but shared Amid’s belief that transparency and honesty with her constituents is key.

“The budget has always been public, but not as visible (as it is now),” Sinsky said. “And that was something that (ASLMU President Ken Cavanaugh) and I decided to promote and publish for people to look at. For me, that was something that we wanted to be transparent about, because we represent all of the students at the university.”

When asked about the situation at USD, she expressed concern at ASG’s lack of transparency thus far.

“I think it’s pretty suspicious that USD’s ASG doesn’t (make the budget public),” Sinsky said. “I would feel pretty shady if I wasn’t being transparent. If you have something to hide on your budget, you’re doing it wrong.”

ASLMU spends a solid amount on things that only benefit those in the student government — things that Sinsky stated are not flattering to disclose, but necessary to operate the organization. 

“We definitely spend money on things for ourselves that maybe somebody would disagree with in the public, but we have it open for people to see, because it’s something that we want to have a conversation about, and we don’t want to like, hide things.” 

But until the ASG budget is made public, there will be no such conversations at USD. And unlike LMU and Chapman students, Toreros will be without access to high-quality journalism from here on out. That is where the similarities between the three schools begin to fray. Toreros, Chapman Panthers, and LMU Lions may share favorable weather on a beautiful campus, small classes, and sky-high tuition, but there’s one thing that they seemingly do not have in common — a student government organization that is transparent with its constituents.

“I don’t think (USD ASG) is evil, and wants to take things away,” Sinsky said, emphasizing that she is not trying to demonize her student government colleagues in San Diego. “It’s probably a funding issue. But I would say that if there were 1,300 students (using the free newspapers) … I would say that that’s worth it, and not cancel it.”