This letter is in response to the recent argument LDSSA presented regarding it’s funding from ASUU.
LDSSA asserts, because of it’s proclaimed 15000 student membership, it deserves a larger portion of ASUU’s funds over smaller, minority groups. This argument can be justified only under one condition: that all, if not most, of it’s members are actively participating in the student group. Therefore, if LDSSA wants to be taken seriously, it must present to ASUU (and to all students, for that matter) an accurate number of active members. After all, the LDSSA accounts for it’s membership solely on those who are in the LDS religion–active or inactive. It is not unreasonable to assume a good portion of LDS students are apathetic to the LDS religion (any religion has it’s inactives) and thus not even know of the existence of LDSSA, much less care about it.
Perhaps I am making an asinine assumption, but until LDSSA comes up with real numbers, it is definitely not unwarranted. Nevertheless, the practice of including inactive members of the LDS religion as members of LDSSA is an abuse of statistics–they are boosting their numbers to make themselves appear more deserving of additional funds.
Using LDSSA’s logic, if I were to make a new student group that included every U student as a member, active and inactive, I should receive the most funding from ASUU. Of course, any sane person would agree that such a student group does not deserve such funds, as only a few (i.e me, and select friends) people would actually make use of it. It is obvious that such a student group must have a significant portion of active members in order to be deserving of proportionate funding.
Now to address specific issues in Nick Macey’s article printed on March 12. He claims that the “ASUU is afraid of. . . assisting [LDSSA] with events benefitting the entire campus.” This statement is as audacious as it is false. I believe I can speak for all non-LDS students when I say that the LDSSA has not done even one thing for us here on campus. That’s right, not one. So absent were they from my campus life that I wasn’t even aware such an organization existed before they started demanding more funds. For certain, the LDSSA does not affect the campus lives of many students, especially those non-LDS.
Macey also argues that LDSSA is deserving of the maximum allowed funds from the ASUU. Already I see a few parallels between this organization and that which I made up above. To make such a statement is not only unrealistic, but wholly selfish.
In closing, I would like to retract my previous point. The LDSSA has, in fact, had an affect on my campus life. That is, it’s very existence has raised student fees. Funny how a religion can take money away even from non-members, isn’t it?
Jason HoSophomore, Physics