University (non-)Relations

I would like to take this time to highlight the problems one student organization has been having with the Union Policy Board. This has extended into University Relations, as all of their records have apparently been transferred there.

Strategic Game Club has been denied an office in the latest office allocation, despite having filed all appropriate documents on time. In this, the latest round, the UPB held a meeting without notifying anyone who might be interested that it was taking place on May 7. The legality of such a move has yet to be determined, but the important part of that meeting, as far as this discussion is concerned, is that the club was removed from a previous allocation because of, among other things, "current and previous/continued lease-violations".

The idea of "current and previous/continued lease-violations" was news to the club, and London Burt, the Secretary, made a request for previous UPB meetings and any records of lease violations, so as to understand what things were being used against them. Here is the reply he received:

From: Amy R. Watson <awatson@uwm.edu>
Date: Thu, May 8, 2008 at 5:42 PM
Subject: Re: Open Records Request
To: London Burt <malkavian999@gmail.com>


Hi London,

First, this message serves as receipt of your request for an audio copy of the meeting held on May 7th. I do not know if I am able to provide that to you in the next day or two, but I will certainly process your request as quickly as I can.

Second, I am still working on your first request, which I hope to complete soon. One clarification: you did ask for complaints, allegations, or investigations about lease violations about Strategic Gaming Club, but you did not provide the time frame of five years, so I will have to find out if there are any such documents that date back to 2003.

Also, one note. The reason this request takes some time is that in accordance with FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), I cannot release the personally identifiable information of students in conjunction with their activities in an organization. This means that the audio you are requesting as well as the copies of the UPB minutes will be heavily redacted, because personally identifiable information extends beyond just name. It includes other information that would make a student's identity easily traceable, and that includes a student's voice. So, the only portions of an audio recording of a UPB meeting that I can release are the voices of non-student employees who are members of the UPB or at a UPB meeting (for instance, Scott Gore or Tom Viel).
When I complete the request and provide the documents to you, I will provide a more detailed explanation as well as citation to the FERPA federal statute and regulations. I just want you to be prepared that the minutes and audio recording will have significant redactions.

Thanks, and I will be in touch as soon as I can.

Amy
--

Amy Watson
Communications Project Manager/
Public Records Custodian
Department of University Relations
UW-Milwaukee
(414) 229-5188
(414) 229-6261 fax

I understand that privacy issues regarding student organizations are to be respected. I would not want the records of random organizations thrown into the public record. However, the organization being considered here is the Union Policy Board, and the material being considered here is the audio record of the meetings at which they make policy for the UWM Union. A such, this is more of a government organization, as they have the power to vote on the Union budget and assign office space within the Union; and their membership, meetings, and activities are open to the public. Being willing only to publish non-students' comments (which make up 1/3 of the voting membership and 40% of overall membership) frustrates the idea of open meetings, especially since this is the committee in charge of a large portion of non-allocable student segregated fees. This unholy alliance of secrecy on the part of the University Relations department and the Union Policy Board in charge of large amounts of money (and half a floor of office space) is an open invitation to corruption.

Rueden in Senate Appropriations?

Senate Appropriations Summary
This is another document from the Student Association records. This one is amazing for two reasons. The first is that it represents the exact amount that appeared on Russ Rueden's time card for August 2006 (the one where he claimed to work ten days over the summer from midnight to noon). The second is the heading "Senate Appropriations Committee." The only association that the Speaker of the Senate has is to chair the meeting at which SAC elects its chair. So what is he doing being paid out of this account?

New documents released

The Campus Democracy Coalition, a loose confederation of concerned students and student organizations, held a press conference this morning to release financial documents that were obtained through an open records request. The documents, and their meaning, are:
Time Log -- Russ Rueden This is Russ Rueden's time card from August 2006. It lists him as having worked ten days that month from midnight to noon. While this may be the case, there are obvious questions associated with this:

1. What was going on at that time that required working such hours and required 12 hour shifts?
2. Over the summer, the building closes at 10:00 p.m., and anyone who is in there after hours (allowable as an officer of a student organization) must contact Client Services (who act as on-site security for the building) and inform them of this. Do their records concur with this timecard?
3. The building is locked two hours before these shifts began. Did Mr. Rueden gain access after hours, or did he enter before his shift and choose to begin working at midnight?
4. It is possible to edit the file, so the time period may have been mistaken (and should have read noon to midnight instead of the reverse). Even so, it still means that he was in the office after hours, for which records should still be available from Client Services.

Time Log -- Jon Tingley This is Vice President Tingley's card from the same time period. This one shows important information. First, the EDIT tag is visible, which would allow people to edit the record. Second, there are, in most cases, exact times posted, as opposed to the neatly-rounded hours found on the previous card. This shows that this is likely a record of hours that was not edited after the fact, except for one or two possible places.

Time Log -- Samantha Prahl This is the most interesting of the time logs. Not only are all of the times rounded off, there are a large number of them recorded by hand. When asked about this, she claimed that those times represented days when there were over 20 people who needed to be entered into the system, which is more than it can handle. Therefore, on those days, she volunteered to not be included and record hours manually.

20 people maximum on the account seems like a reasonable number, but the claim that the limit was not only reached over the summer, but reached nearly constantly, begins to stretch the imagination. If this is true, then there are records of the 20 people who were clocked in on each of those days, and I for one would like to see them.

Summary of Executive branch pay August 2005 This is a summary of how much the four main Student Association officers and the Chief or Staff were paid in August 2005, under the Rueden administration. Note that, of these, the highest number of hours are attributed to Rueden and Prahl, more than double any other officer.

Segregated Fees Summary: Executive Wages This shows the amount of wages paid to the current executive officers as of October 18. Note that there are double entries for three officers, where two amounts are paid in the same month, and that each officer who has this double entry does so in a different month. Also note that the $1,680.00 that is claimed on Prahl's August timecard is annotated as September, suggesting that these listings are for the month after work is completed.

It is also worth noting that Ms. Prahl has already claimed $5,743.60 of the $9,000.00 annual salary available for the office of SA President. At this rate, her salary fund will be exhausted halfway through her term of office.

Segregated Fees summary: Legislative Wages This shows the payments to those members of the legislature who receive pay. Note that, just as in the case of the Executive branch, Speaker Rueden has already collected thousands of dollars in salary, and is on pace to exhaust his salary cap halfway through the term.

Segregated Fee Expenditures 2005-2006 This summary of expenditures and transfers has an interesting note on the fifth entry: $1,437.00 to AcerPrudens, the company at the heart of the Sandburg Halls controversy. My sources tell me that this money was authorized for AcerPrudens to create a website that was never finished by them. In another parallel to the Sandburg Halls Administrative Council scenario, there was a webmaster already on the payroll at the time.

In addition, there are large budgets for things such as printing, postage and travel. While all of these expenses may very well be justifiable, the pattern of the past mandates that all of these be investigated to avoid problems.