OPINION: What is to be done about Joint Vision 2017?

About two weeks ago, concerned University of Nevada, Reno students filled the Senate Chambers in the Student Union for the first time since the building’s inception. Various fliers, Facebook.com postings and verbal debates called the students into action in what also could have been on the largest mobilizations on campus since I first arrived on campus in the fall of 2008. I was among them, and I felt a sense of pride; it seemed that the myth of student apathy had been defeated. The message I, and other students, sent were clear. The Joint Vision 2017 plan, as it stands, is not acceptable.

ASUN president Eli Reilly has since withdrawn his aggressive December timeline. Even with that decision, the current plan on the table has structural faults that are too significant to ignore. The ASUN Senate now has the opportunity to fix these faults and turn the document into a practical plan that can be implemented in realistic terms. The senate should seize on this opportunity and invite student input into the plan. The current document simply ignores its idealistic faults and the lack of real student insight.

The issue during the creation of this document, I think, is that the executive branch appeared to be effectively a tool for the administration. UNR President Milton Glick recently released his own administrative plan for the university. Like Joint Vision 2017, the plan reaches out into the next decade and has similar characteristics to Joint Vision 2017 itself. Is this a mere coincidence? No. UNR seems to be preparing for a future without the full support of the state government. As we are aware, Nevada faces a larger budget shortfall for the 2011 biennium. Naturally, the university will want to seek a way to survive the next decade without worrying about state budgetary problems. The problem is that the administration cannot expect the ASUN Senate to be its arm in enacting programs that do not necessarily reflect the interests of the students. The administration, and more specifically the Board of Regents, would love to wash their hands of the budget problem and instead place the cost of keeping essential programs in the hands of the student body. This would be acceptable if the students want such a plan.

The $75 fee plan was created without any student input at all. This is what created the outrage. In the current economic situation, it is simply unrealistic to expect a student body to be content with supporting such an increase. Isn’t it ironic that not long ago, president Eli Reilly was calling for a program to create about 20 jobs because of the “tough economic times”? To my knowledge, nothing has changed. Unemployment has continued to increase and Nevada is up there with Michigan in terms of overall economic downturn.

Visit www.asun.unr.edu/JV2017 to watch president Reilly's video on JV 2017.

The Joint Vision plan itself is another result of this apparent outside influence. It is quite Utopian and presents ideas developed by scholars who have researched “similar programs that make a university great.” The problem is that each university is different, including Nevada. Nevada faces geographical and historical factors that prevent it from becoming an Ohio State or a Berkeley. Utopian ideas do not usually do well in reality. This is perhaps an intention on the part of the executive board, and whoever else took part in developing this plan. If things do not work out, ASUN or administration can simply say “the program was too big to implement”. The creation of a “Student Activities Center” that is run by administrators and conflicts with current ASUN programs is an example of why this idealism was developed. The administrative part of the university will get more money and thus be relieved of budget shortfalls. In other words, they do not want to be dependent on the state. Every bureaucracy is self-interested.

Don’t believe me? Just look at what happened to the “revolution” in the USSR by the mid ‘30’s. The same type of bureaucracy the Soviets hated was created and destroyed the principal elements of the Bolshevik Revolution.

To continue this borrowing of history, I will ask the same question Lenin did shortly before 1917: What is to be done?

First, the ASUN Senate must re-format the plan into something that will work realistically. This means that the Utopian ideas from the scholars must be cut. This sounds radical, but UNR cannot simply aspire to become what it is not. The university has to build upon its strengths. ASUN senators should also look at the documents and plans that created the Joe Crowley Student Union and the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center. Those plans could teach them something; What worked and what didn’t? There is something to be learned from the past. In the macro sense, idealism usually does not work. In the micro sense, how can we borrow the structure of the JCSU/KC plans and see to it that the Joint Vision 2017 plan is implemented into reality without major problems? While a bureaucracy cannot be avoided, a large one would be detrimental.

Second, the students must be able to vote on any fee increase plan. Most students are barely able to afford college at the moment. Does the university want to keep and gain students, or does it want to see a lost? Graduate and undergraduate students alike are bothered at the current plan and will most likely reject a $75 r increase even if the JV 2017 document is improved significantly. Perhaps a lower fee can be developed, and earn favor among the student body?

To quote George Santayana – “”Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”