For Syracuse University students, there was almost no escaping the battle over last week’s Student Association referendum on funding for the New York State Public Interest Research Group.

Students trudging to class were met by a phalanx of NYPIRG supporters handing out fliers and urging them to head to the polls. Residence hall corridors were papered with signs and students were bombarded with numerous e-mails.

The discussion turned rancorous at times. NYPIRG members silently protested at an SA assembly meeting, white bandanas covering their mouths. Former SA President Andrew Thomson wrote a letter to The Daily Orange calling NYPIRG a ‘childish group that will stop at nothing to get what it wants.’

Despite the controversy, the referendum remained free of violations of SA’s elections code. A rare phenomenon in the world of SU student politics.

‘This was the first referendum-slash-election in three years where no charges have been filed,’ said Jessie Cordova, chairwoman of the Board of Elections and Membership.

Although student groups routinely squabble over funding, most of it occurs within the confines of SA’s Finance Board, said SA President Drew Lederman. NYPIRG is the only group that receives direct funding, instead of student activity fee money controlled by Finance Board, through a referendum process laid out in the group’s contract with SA. While SA codes contain no specific provision that allows other student organizations to seek direct referendum funding, they do not specifically forbid it, either, Lederman said.

‘They say they can, just because it doesn’t say they can’t,’ he said.

In order for a group to receive funding through a referendum, the measure must be approved by two-thirds of SA’s Assembly, Lederman said. In recent history, no group besides NYPIRG has pursued referendum funding, Lederman said. Given the assembly’s current opposition to the referendum process, it is unlikely that any future requests will meet with much support, he added.

‘The assembly isn’t too keen on it, at least right now,’ he said.

Although NYPIRG’s funding mechanism is an exception to the rule, the group is accustomed to the process since it faces the referendum every four years. This year’s vote was different, however, due to a push by SA officials to make the group more accountable for the way it spends its money. The assembly approved the addition of an extra question, allowing students to decide whether NYPIRG’s money should be added to the general student activity fee, allowing the group to follow the normal SA funding process.

In response to what its members called a ‘misleading question,’ NYPIRG put together a vigorous campaign encouraging students to vote in favor of keeping NYPIRG’s current funding. Dozens of student volunteers hit the streets to hand out fliers and drum up supports, said Sean Vormwald, project coordinator for the SU and State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry chapter of NYPIRG. Members from other NYPIRG chapters around the state also came to campus to support the campaign.

‘Folks from other chapters came because they heard about the misleading question,’ Vormwald said.

Even though NYPIRG was already under attack for its spending, money spent to print campaign materials such as fliers and posters was not a significant factor, Vormwald said.

‘We can produce fliers very inexpensively,’ he said. ‘We take advantage of economies of scale to buy things in bulk.’

The group even has its own printing press, he added.

SA also got in on the printing act, producing posters encouraging students to vote. SA officials are forbidden from asking students to vote a certain way on referenda, although some SA cabinet members wrote to The Daily Orange to correct what they saw as misleading information in NYPIRG’s campaign materials.

Both Thomson, a current member of the Board of Elections and Membership, and SA Comptroller Maggie Misztal had letters published, both of which carefully avoided supporting either side of the issue.

‘I will not tell you which boxes to check,’ Thomson told students in his letter.

Thomson’s letter, however, also contained some harsh words for NYPIRG, calling the first day of the election a ‘day of lies’ that exposed the group’s ‘seamy underbelly.’

Thomson helped staff a polling place on the SUNY ESF campus that first day. Cordova, who worked with Thomson during his shift, feels that Thomson upheld his obligation to remain neutral while on shift. As long as they don’t participate in a campaign for one side of the referendum or another or bias voters at the polling place, BEM members are free to express their opinions on the subject.

‘I have no doubt that I was completely impartial when I was at the polling location,’ Thomson said, adding that he refrained from explicitly stating his opinion on the matter throughout the election.

‘I didn’t even tell my house-mates how I was voting on the issue,’ he said.

Published on February 19, 2004 at 12:00 pm