By Jens Tamang

A MCSG meeting was held from 7:00p.m.-9:00p.m. and a subsequent open forum to discuss the student activities surplus that was “discovered” (see Mac Weekly 4/1/11 by McJunkin). Guests were asked to attend and speak. I attended in order to support the initiative to hold MCSG accountable for discriminatory allocation practices, call for the creation of baseline criteria for money allocation and dissolve the MCSG in favor of a Student Organization Union. Though I cannot say this of everyone, there were others who came for the same reason. What follows is a brief collection of notes on the meeting:1. MCSG members asked the open forum guests who attended to rely on the minutes-otherwise known as the written document that details what was said in previous meetings-when making claims about discriminatory allocation practices. When an argument was formed out of those minutes that made such a claim, MCSG members defended themselves by claiming that the minutes were not an accurate representation of what went on in the meetings after all.

2. Regarding the question that was lodged to the guests by an MCSG member: “Is it possible for anyone to deny funding to a queer organization without having it be bigoted?” The answer is yes, it is possible.

3. Members of MCSG said that their feelings had been “hurt” by the accusations lodged against them. This indicates to me that inquiry into structural reassessment of MCSG’s financial allocation policies are, in their eyes, already/always malicious in nature . In response, I could pose the same question asked in bullet point 2-“Is there any way for a marginalized person to propose changes to student government policy without having to be seen as someone with a bad temper or a member of the fictitious ‘political correctness police’?”-but to ask that question, that would be malicious.

4. After it was discussed that the “class night” events-mock tail mixers-had been denied total funding it was unclear whether or not Brian Rosenberg had paid for the event out of pocket. No answers were given in the meeting.

5. It was insinuated by members of the audience who opposed the initiative to start a student organization union that Black History Month, Adelante, Queer Union, and Caribbean Students Association, to name a few, were “special interest groups.”

6. It took members of the FAC and MCSG approximately 15 minutes to decide whether or not to strike subsection 13, article 3, section 4 of the by-laws-a caveat that determined whether or not the president should hold a meeting for “Build a Better Mac.” It took one of the guests 10 seconds to succinctly outline the demands we made of them.

7. When I tried to access old copies of the MCSG by-laws, the computer told me I had “insufficient privileges.” I laughed.

Further meetings will be held, the times and locations of which will be announced in the Daily Piper. I implore those who Don’t See Anything Wrong with the MCSG’s allocation practices to attend.