Questioning Winters's judgment

It is almost halfway through James Winters' term as our student trustee, and in that time he has been quite busy. First, he threw all his campaign promises out the window. With those conveniently out of the way, Winters was free to start creating paid, do-nothing positions for his friends. Now Winters is calling for an administrative salary freeze to pad the budget during this time of economic uncertainty. However, if the University needs to take a scalpel to its budget, perhaps they should start with the trustee's allowance, as he has demonstrated an inability to appropriate it wisely. To see the full scope of Winters's poor judgment it is necessary to examine what he has done in office thus far, beginning where he began - on the campaign trail.

While running for office, Winters based his candidacy around three core promises. First, he pledged to sponsor a letter-writing campaign to put pressure on Springfield for more state funding. To say nothing of its na'veté, the plan had one serious flaw - Winters never did the math. After being elected, Winters realized he could not afford to foot the bill and quietly swept the whole thing under the rug.

Winters also promised to draft a students' bill of rights. However, even as he gallantly preached the document's necessity from the stump, Winters knew it would not actually grant students any new rights; it would simply put all the existing student rights in one spot. He's had four months to get it done; yet to this day his office has not bothered to simply cut and paste our existing rights together.

Finally, while campaigning, the trustee promised he would march down to Springfield himself and lobby the state legislature directly for funds. Albeit noble, his plan was doomed before he was elected. Law prohibits any member of the Board of Trustees from lobbying the legislature directly - that's why the Board has a paid lobbyist on staff. Perhaps Winters should have done his homework before running for the most important student office.

So, if Winters hasn't been doing what he was elected to do, it begs the question: what has he been doing? To get the real answer, one must follow the money.

This year the student trustee's total budget amounts to $13,940, which comes out of our student fees. The trustee is supposed to reinvest this portion of our money back into the institution to improve it, making it stronger so that it may work harder for us. However, when you take a look at where this money is actually going, you'll find it lining the pockets of Winters' friends.

One of his first acts as student trustee was to give $300.00 to his old Undergraduate Student Government (USG) pal, Jesse Christ, who designed Winters's campaign web page. The official budget claims this money is for "updating costs" of his current webpage, but thus far there have been no new news updates on his site.

Next, Winters' hired the largest paid staff of any student trustee - one that is supposed to represent the entire student body. However, the job offers were only extended to those on the student organization listserv. Further, the overwhelming majority of the new staff positions went to more USG cohorts, some of whom still hold USG positions. On top of paying these new staffers $2,200.00, Winters is also giving them a spending budget of $6,400. To date, Winters and the new cabinet members have offered only vague generalizations regarding how they plan to spend this money.

Furthermore, as if he hadn't given enough to his friends, Winters set aside another $1,000.00 to buy undefined "gifts" for a USG program with an operating budget of only $6,000.00. This is not spending our money responsibly to better the University - it's rewarding friends that helped him get into office.

Now Winters expects University staff members to voluntarily forgo a portion of their future salaries during one of the most turbulent economic periods in our nation's history. However, this is far from the most intelligible solution to the current problem. He's asking others to make sacrifices before truly acting himself and using the tools at his disposal to fix the problem. He's trying to spread scarce resources thinner, in lieu of working to create new resources.

During his time in office Winters has demonstrated poor judgment. It was wrong of him to promise the University things during an election that he knew he couldn't deliver. It was wrong of him to take student money and spend it by creating unnecessary new positions that have yet to bequeath a single beneficiary act. And it is wrong of him now to ask the administrators - the backbone of the University - to make sacrifices while he continues to spend.

Is this judgment of a leader? If you don't think so - tell him. It's your money he is spending, and it's his job to spend it on you. If you haven't seen the benefit of your investment, the least you could do is send him an e-mail (j.a.winters@gmail.com) expressing your concerns. It's your education his salary-freeze could compromise by prohibiting UIC from holding and expanding a superior teaching staff. If that troubles you, go visit his office (room 395, SCE) and let him know. Ultimately, public officials must answer the public, provided the public asks questions first.