And an ASUN…in a tree? In a bind? In…uh…different? Yeah. Indifferent.

How often do you think about the ASUN? Well, if you aren’t a crotchity Student for Liberty, an anonymous watchwolf group, a “secret society” existing solely for the betterment of UNR whose members are variously named Deeds, Chinook, Schlitzes, Smalls, Butters, Shylock, Judas, Yellow Belly,Kobayashi, The Graduate, $eaman, Boomerang, Johnny Utah, and Keiko, or an ASUN hack yourself, the answer is probably: Not a whole heck of a lot.

When people disregard their government, a beautiful freedom is coupled with an unacceptable encroachment. The beauty is hardly perceived: not worrying about what your government is doing, not caring what a bunch of robed bureaucrats have to say about anything, not listening to those in unjustified positions over their fellow citizens. It’s wonderful and liberating. It is freedom in every sense of the word.

Unfortunately, this also leaves that government free: free of accountability, of responsibility, of justification. This gives those same people who we all care so little about the ability to do whatever they like with whatever resources it would like to claim it has. One doesn’t need to be versed in the history of societies or trained in public choice theory or even pick up the morning paper to see these effects, just look at our model government: the ASUN.

Briefly, the ASUN is inefficient, unjustified, propped up on a false proposition, in no way in a position to intelligently spend the money of 12,000 people, full of people placed there not by a vast majority vote but by small proportion of the population which exudes a huge influence, fiscally irresponsible, riddled with inconsistencies, full of unfixable problems, managed by a superficial system of checks and balances, stitched together with an unworkable hodgepodge of outdated procedures to deal with current situations, and has more committees than it knows what to do with, use, understand the purpose of, or logically explain to you, me, or anyone who asks why, how, or for what reason they can, should, and do exist.

Did you get all that? Me neither. Who would? Governments talk more than we want to listen. They talk and talk and speak and whisper and shout and proclaim and say that this and this and that and this and other stuff should be done and that you should care and that if you don’t you’re part of the problem and you should be ashamed, ashamed, and blamed and blamed.

It’s  not your fault that governments are bad.
It’s not your fault that you don’t care that they’re bad.
It’s not your fault that you don’t care that you don’t care that they’re bad.

Governments are bad (that is, they are plagued with the faults mentioned a few paragraphs above), regardless of whether or not you care about them. You know that. They should know that too. We over here at the UNR Students for Liberty have tried every which way we can to make ASUN better.

These approaches have varied from talking with senators to attending their meetings to making a stand against proposed legislation to (for those of the more radical amongst us) calling for their complete abolishment. The case could be made that no government > bad government, but that is ultimately a discussion for another time. One thing we can all agree on is that a Good Student Government is better than a Bad Student Government. And right now, we need ASUN to be something different than a bad student government.

In the spirit of the holidays, we have tried to show places where the ASUN (like all governments) has gone wrong and even suggested here and there how things might be better. Whether these “gifts” are cherished, burned like coal, left to accumulate dust in the corner, dreaded like a homemade knitted sweater, or simply returned for store credit, I’m not sure. But at the very least, we hope we’ve given you (and the ASUN) something to think about. Now, get off the computer and go enjoy your family and friends.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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I would like to bluntly describe a big problem within the ASUN bureaucracy – they try to care but end up hurting the very people they intend to help. They have sticky notes all around their offices, some even going so far as saying “Goal: visit every club’s meeting at least once”. What an absurd thing to post when they can’t even show up to work on time, let alone getting out of their chairs to go to a club meeting on time. When START was attempting to gather more information about ASUN, we scheduled a meeting with one of them to help us understand how everything worked. What did we receive at this meeting? White lies, dodging questions, scoffing remarks, and an overall attitude of ‘leave me alone to my internet games on my office computer’. How do they expect anyone to try and become more involved with them when we go to to them and get treated with snarky remarks, scowling looks, and an appearance that we are nothing more than a nuisance to them? It’s like a Las Vegas DMV on a more vindictive, personal level.

Am I trying to tell the maids of milkin’ to care more? No.  It’s futile. It is futile because nobody cares in the iron cages of a bureaucratic system which is not held accountable by performance measurements. Working in a bureaucracy is an infectious disease which promotes and rewards bad attitudes, tends to spread a sense of entitlement, and is rampant with personal apathy. It ravages the mind as it strips you down into an automaton of rules, regulations, office hours, and pay grades. It strips you of identity and destroys all incentives to perform. Next time you visit one of our many bureaucracies, may it be a DMV, a post office, admissions and records, or the beloved cashier’s office, look at their faces and tell me if they are really happy with their workplace.

What is my practical suggestion to the maids of ASUN? Well obviously you won’t accept my suggestion of doing the student body a service and quitting. What I would recommend, however, is to drop this ridiculous facade of caring. Stop trying to “train” club leaders or hold leadership conferences as if you know something about leadership.

“Bro, grab some leadership.”

Stop trying to indoctrinate us with your “word campaigns”, subject us to your joint visions, and pound us with your diversity initiatives as if one size fits everyone. And, for goodness sakes, stop trying to expand and hire more of yourselves. Why? Because, as our earlier posts have indicated, you are going to fail. You fail so hard, in fact, that you cannot even measure or quantify your failure (leadership conference 2008 anyone?). Instead, embrace something bureaucracies are known to do – administrate. Don’t pretend like you are more than a DMV or a business bureau. Quit trying to expand in areas outside the realm of the roles of any dysfunctional, yet operational administrative agency. Anything more is personally disparaging, insulting, and a major disappointment to those motivated individuals who have been duped into expecting something more from your absurd programs.

© John Russell for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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If you get nothing else out of this article, understand this: The middle ground is the refuge of the incompetent. The constant compromise of two mutually exclusive positions produces a monstrously lackluster philosophy which no one in their heart of hearts actually finds satisfying. “I won’t pretend to believe this, if you pretend not to believe that.” There is nothing good in this position.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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An ASUN Poem
I went to ASUN one day,
To see what we could collect for pay,
Food n’ fliers n’ tickets galore,
Each budget meeting has more and more,
Available to those who know the way.

This money does not belong to me,
And neither does it belong to thee,
So why are we bickering,
When there are budgets to be tinkering,
In order to maximize our student fee?

Well, when money belongs to no one you see,
There tends to be a tragedy,
Of the commons! Where nobody really cares,
Enough to get involved in their affairs,
Except for those who morally oppose (like SFL or the CK bros) stealing from all to “give” to me…

With a system which repels common decency,
And promotes fiscal apathy,
Is bound to fail, from the beginning!
No matter the policies at their bidding,
Despite any promise or guarantee.

So why should such a system endure?
When there’s no good way, I can assure,
To spend another person’s money,
Even if guised as charity… or equality… or philanthropy,
It must end you see! For sure!

© John Russell for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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So why exactly did we request so much money for such stupid things? Why did we want funds for things we feel the club commission has no right funding? How did we get about $1,000 to bring an anarchist on campus? How did we get catered? How did we get bullets? How did we nearly get a cruise? And why oh why would we want all of these things?

To get you to ask the next question: Why would the club commission fund this stuff?

Many people from the Sagebrush to the VisLupiKids to the CoffinAndKeyBros have all tried to explain how the system is supposed to work. In fact, in their recent “edition” of their newsletter (aww, ain’t that cute? A newsletter.), the CoffinKeyPeople rubbed two neurons together to try to explain how club funding is “supposed” to work: ”Think of it like a start-up business loan, which the clubs pay back by providing students one more potential option for an extraordinary college experience.” Not only is this an asinine and naive way of thinking about club funding, but as they readily admit “it [current club funding] has done the complete opposite.”

These same people have said that something needs to be done: draft some legislation, talk to your senator, get a petition going, do something. They’ve typed and typed and typed telling others that “they” need to do…well…something.

Well, I suppose we were guilty of the same laziness. We said, Maybe we should become senators. So, we tried to become senator

s. We said, Maybe we should go to a senate meeting. But, they’re boring, nothing gets done, we have jobs and school, and these senators were hired to do a job, not hired to sit on their ass waiting for suggestions. We said, Maybe we should write the commission directly and show them the problem. And write to them we did. We said, Maybe we should try something else.

And we tried something else.

We eventually figured out that you can’t rationally fix an irrational system. Fight the ridiculous with the absurd. If they don’t see how dumb their system is, let us show them. If they don’t know the effects of their policies, let us teach them. If they don’t hear anything else, let it be our voices. Let them hear and see and feel and know they are wrong. We show ourselves and our actions and we proclaim that this is what you get with no accountability, no responsibility. Our funds our superfluous, our purchases are frivolous, and you will come to know us — come to know yourselves — through our insolence and waste.

Our work is not yet done.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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…the commission said to me six little words…

And what were those six little words, you may ask? “Sure, you can have ASUN money!” Though I understand what the commission aims to do (after all, clubs do need funding to function properly, do they not?) the inherent flaw in the system is making it far too easy to get this funding legitimized. If the four days prior to this haven’t been enough to convince you of that, let me share a little bit of my knowledge.

As an incoming officer to the club, I’m being learned in the ways of ASUN exploitation. Typically this “top secret” information would be limited to us and our own, but I thought, what the hell, it’s the giving season after all, and I can’t bear the thought of being selfish at this time of the year. We figured it would be appropriate to show you our way of requesting for other people’s money.

It’s simple, really. You start with a club. Of course, we all know that, in order to be an ASUN recognized club, you must have at least ten people registered through the ASUN club and organization website. If you don’t have ten people interested in joining your club, don’t panic! Even if you don’t have ten people interested in your club, you have to have at least ten friends, right? Just send them here, where they need only sign in with their netID and pick your club off the list. It’s as easy as that, and in no time–BAM!–ten registered members.

(Don’t forget, clubs also need advisors, but if you don’t have one don’t sweat it. Just pick a name off of the faculty list. A rather reputable source tells me that they don’t really check to make sure your advisor is actually in on the whole thing. Nifty, isn’t it?)

Members and advisors down, you also need a constitution, but that’s as effortless as copying the ASUN supplied sample club constitution and changing the title to something more “your-club-esque.” My same reputable source has let it slip that they read these about as well as they check on advisors.

Now comes the fun part: your budget. Typically, I’m the kind of struggling college kid that preaches the “conserve your money! That oatmeal won’t buy itself, you know!” route, but this is different. Note, I say “conserve your money,” and the bills that ASUN dolls out aren’t exactly yours, are they? When Mommy and Daddy give you a twenty and tell you to come home with change, do you? Of course not! We here at Students for Liberty take the same approach. If ASUN is willing to give us a ton of money without any real concern, who are we to let them down by spending less of it that we are wholly capable? That’s just ludicrous.

So, like I said: your budget. Get it figured out. Plan exciting meetings, entertainment, events. Then double it. That’s right. Clubs can be allotted ten thousand dollars annually. Milk that sucker for all it’s worth. They wouldn’t offer you that much cash if they weren’t absolutely prepared and totally happy to give it to you, right? Right. So… like I said. Double it. You know you want to.

You will need to represent your budget plan to the commission, and this can be a bit tricky. Here is where they may be able to thwart some of your hard work, but don’t be too alarmed. Just give yourself justification to every activity and item in your budget. Make sure everything has some connection to better the club itself (leadership retreat!), the University as a whole (campus discussion!), or the community (all proceeds to go the ASPCA! Who doesn’t love puppies?). They eat that stuff up.

And… there! The commission is impressed with your load of bullshit–erm, well thought out budget plan–for your extremely qualified and recognized ASUN club, and they accept your proposal and hand out the money. Now that you have it, what do you do? Spend it. Spend it all.

What can you do with ten thousand ASUN dollars, you may ask? Quite a bit–catered meetings, shooting socials, charity dinners, and official conferences are just the beginning. Just like our system’s flaws, your options are limitless–all you need is to know how to exploit it.

However, take this all with a grain of salt. Despite our seemingly ill intents, UNR Students For Liberty truly does embody what a club should be. We are a friendly community of students who share common goals and interests. We have done many influential and helpful events around campus and, contrary to what it may seem, not all of the money we get from ASUN is used for something as superfluous as catered meetings–we’re going to the national Students for Liberty conference this February!

No, the real ridiculous part here isn’t what we do, but it’s that we do exactly what they expect us to do. It isn’t that it’s too easy for clubs to get funding–no matter how much “harder” the process was made, people would still learn how to work the system. The problem is that, no matter how hard ASUN may try, there is no way to spend other people’s money correctly. They are simply too willing to don out vast sums of money for little-to-no good reason.

No amount of amendments to the funding policies will ever solve that.

Merry Christmas!

© Mary Hunton for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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But not everything was a loss at the main budget hearing, nor would I want to spend this season of giving thanks merely complaining. There was a gem or two during the debacle that I would like to give today. Who can forget when Amy Koeckes, ASUN bureaucrat #4, implied that ASUN needed more bros or shes leaving to go to Ohio State?

“Studies have also shown that keg stand time can be directly correlated with academic success.”

In classic UNR Students for Liberty fashion, we illustrated governments cannot rob people of money and expect that money to be allocated efficiently.  When you are spending other people’s money without real accountability in order to achieve an end which cannot be benchmarked, the end result will ALWAYS be
an inefficient allocation of resources. The ASUN is doomed to fail because it lacks true monetary accountability to anyone (as opposed to stockholders of a company), it attempts to achieve an end which cannot be benchmarked: “to better the undergraduate populace’s experience” (as opposed to maximizing profitability like what a private firm would do), and it is ridden with bureaucrats who, for good reason, have no incentive to perform well because performance is not measured.  There is nothing the ASUN can do, or any government agency for that matter, to provide true incentive to perform for there is not a built in mechanism for them to do so.

This is what I tried demonstrating at the senate meeting.  Enjoy!

© John Russell for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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So they didn’t listen to John’s suggestions, what did they listen to? Judging by their raising of the funding limits, the addition of a new tier, an extra veneer of murkiness in their rulings (albeit coupled with highly specific additions: “No ammunition”), and the  fiscal reserve of a sailor on shore leave, I’d have to say Absolutely No One.

But why should that bother me? Our club managed to get more money, more irresponsibly than ever. We simply had to come forward with our hands outsretched and ask (not even with so much as a Please) for money. We know the rules and we know the funding policies (as indecipherable as they are) and as such were able to completely dance around this new batch of commissioners as if they weren’t there. Heck, if it wasn’t for Patrick, Director of ClubStuff, at least six members of the Students for Liberty would be getting ready to go on a cruise.

And for those of you who don’t know: that’s ridiculous.

There is no reason the student body should be paying for our cruises, for our bullets, for our catering. But neither should they be paying for pizza parties, t-shirts, bounce houses, the burnt out lights and lamps of frat houses, trips to just about anywhere for any reason, or something on the order of a hundred or so pounds a semester for apples to be “popped” rather than eaten or used to keep doctor’s away.

Eight people (and their mom) can’t say they speak for the interests of the students and claim they know how to spend other people’s money. Eight students who have taken this job as a resume booster or because some cute chick is thinking about doing it are not qualified to distribute $100,000+ of money that doesn’t belong to them.  They can’t claim benevolence for their actions or decry ours as greedy. We’re doing the same thing from two different sides:

If the Eight want to make their little commission better, they need to first understand basic economic theory. This means knowing why making the process navigable by seasoned pros, making the funds so unaccountable, making the whole procedure a joke rather than a legitimate way to grow the campus community can only be detrimental, can only lead to further exploitation and unjustifiable handouts.

A government is a machine by which good people are immobilized and bad ideas put forth as unalterable fact. It doesn’t have to be this way.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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When I was referred once again to another edition of the CK brah’s literary masterpiece from the VisLupis kiddies, I was ecstatic and dumfounded. Ecstatic in the fact that the inherent problems of ASUN are being illustrated through our newest campaign of showing people how terrible it is, and dumfounded in the fact that the same people who criticized us when we tried illuminating the problems through the START campaign are now suddenly agreeing with the fundamentals of our platform.

But, as mentioned earlier, this is the season of giving. Below you will find my five page report I gave to the club commission when my duty as club commissioner was completed. Included in this document you will find my concerns that the CK-tards have brought up just recently: the system is inherently broken and the policies the commission seek only make matters worse. No other commissioner, to my knowledge, submitted anything when I wrote this last year. I was never contacted when this year’s funding policies were drafted even though I requested to be in attendance.

So, as I gobble down catered meals on the backs of students like myself who are forced into an inherently flawed system, I feel justified by illustrating the inherit, unrepairable problems with “their” student government, the institution of government itself, and with the hopes that future students may be spared hundreds of dollars: that one day, a flawed system can be ended.

I hope you enjoy this more than the trash can did in the ASUN offices. I also hope this shows all the critics who constantly bombard myself and the members of the UNR Students for Liberty that, yes, we have tried to give constructive criticism and solutions to your own problems, and no, you guys don’t give two cents so quit pretending like you do by inviting us to your meetings to patronize us and waste our time.

But I think I should be very clear: this is not a failure of the individuals in government , but it is a problem with government and democracy in and of itself. Hayek sums it up best when he states: “This does not mean that the majority of people have low moral standards it merely means that the largest group of people whose values are very similar are the people with low standards. It is, as it were, the lowest common denominator which unites the largest number of people.” A democratic system is bound to produce sub-par results, because these results are the only things a large majority of people can agree upon.

Have a Merry Christmas! (If you have limited time, start reading page 3)

Political and Social Involvement Coalition –

© John Russell for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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You know you’re doing something right when the VisLupiKids and the CoffinAndKeyR-Tards are saying you’re doing something wrong.

Recently, both groups highlighted the fact that funding from the ASUN is ridiculous.The CaKDudes agreed with Patrick Delaplain, Director of Clubs Stuff,when he referred to “our current club funding policies a ‘club un-support’ system,” then went on to show that particular groups got particularly dumb funding and that this should be stopped. Among the most notable mentions was our club:

“UNR Students for Liberty – $5,516 across a variety of
tiers for catering, plane tickets, a speaker etc. It doesn’t
seem like UNR Students for Liberty practice the ‘sound
money’ that they preach.”

The VisLupiKids, never far behind, jumped on board and said Yeah! You go CaKBros! You get those UNR Students for Liberty! They even went so far as to jab right at us, “you can’t assert you do not acknowledge the legitimacy of government while at the same time suckling from the government’s tit.”

Not only can we do that, but we needed to do that. We needed to do it to get people like you and the CaKBrosefs to even notice that the funding policies have been flawed for years. We needed to do it to get people like the director of Clubs’n'Such, the senate, the commissioners, the ASUN to recognize the inherent inadequacies of their policies. We’ve tried the diplomatic, “legitimate” approach. It didn’t work. We even tried talking to our senators:

There’s no point. We’ve tried, God knows we’ve tried to reform the student government. But there’s no point. It’s a flawed system, in and of itself. The policies, the positions, the participants: broken and unfixable, all of it.

So what have we done this time? We’ve said outright that we are exploiting ASUN. We are biting the hand that feeds us so that hopefully that hand’s owner will know better than to feed all the things that come up to it. We’re the monsters your system has created: a club that relies solely on the ASUN for funding, with no intentions of stopping, and no intentions of seeking outside funding. We aren’t hiding behind the ploy of “bettering the campus.” We’re not even trying to better ourselves.

We’re just a $5,000+ mirror for an unworkable system.

But…but we have a heart over here at the Students for Liberty. And in the spirit of the season, we’ll be giving back. We’re not so selfish. It’s not always about us. That’s why we’ll be posting 10 gifts from here until Christmas. Please do enjoy.

© Barry Belmont for UNR Students for Liberty, 2009.
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