Last week, The College Fix reported that Old Dominion University Student government leaders took away nearly half the College Republicans’ budget–on the basis of a technicality. The student government finance director responsible for taking the money used the same pool of funds to pay for an expensive trip for a small group of students to a European gay rights festival. After the Fix published its report, a public outcry prompted intervention from the university president and, ultimately, the return of the College Republican’s funds. Below, Julius Lacano, Chairman of the ODU College Republicans tells how his group triumphed over apparent bias on campus.
A week ago, the Old Dominion College Republicans had a problem. About half of our budget had been unjustly taken, and student government leaders had made it clear that they weren’t giving it back. Due to the loss of funding, our group’s planned student trip to CPAC was in jeopardy. After reaching a dead end with the student government and the university itself, the ODU College Republicans decided that the only way to press for change was to tell the world our story. Another member, Mike Sobey, and myself, wrote articles dealing with the injustice that we felt was occurring at ODU. Coincidentally, both of these articles were picked up at The College Fix. From there, the story spread to GenFringe, Townhall.com, Chicks on the Right, Bearing Drift, and The National Review Online, among others.
What started as a small story about a College Republican group in Norfolk, Virginia soon began being shared thousands of times by conservatives throughout the United States fed up with both liberal academia and the double standard that seems to exist when dealing with conservative groups.
Starting Friday and throughout the weekend, the story spread through social media. Alumni, current students, concerned locals and complete strangers began voicing their opposition. The SGA and ODU Senate got wind of these stories and dug in and stuck to their guns. Through sources they let us know that they were denying our request for a hearing concerning the matter and denied that any conflict of interest existed.
While SGA was trying to maintain the status quo, emails were being sent by concerned and angry readers to the President of the university, Dr. John Broderick, the President of the Student Government, Collin Hurst, and to the Finance Director in question, Connor Norton. By Sunday night the university had gotten wind of the bad press and decided it was time to make amends. At around 7pm they asked for a meeting between the Chairman of the ODU College Republicans and the President of the Student Government.
The meeting was courteous and beneficial on both sides of the table. The SGA President apologized for our money being taken and described it as an unfortunate “misunderstanding” and a learning experience for all involved. He also said that the stories circulating shed a bad light on the university and had shown that there were glaring issues that existed and needed to be fixed.
While he tried to brush over the conflict of interest, he did concede that from an outside viewer, it did appear that there was a conflict of interest, if not collusion between the SGA and the theatre troupe led by Finance Director, Connor Norton. He also agreed with the Chairman of the ODU College Republicans that the rule concerning the 50% budget use was unnecessary and that it is the SGA’s job to fund organizations, not take that funding away due to technicalities. He further agreed that better checks and balances and more stringent oversight must be enacted to prevent a similar occurrence from ever happening again.
Soon after the meeting ended, the SGA President sent a letter to the Student body informing them of the meeting that had occurred earlier that day and that a motion to strike the controversial bylaw would be taken up and voted upon by the University Senate. He also promised that the financial bylaws would be completely analyzed with the input of the SGA and all associated groups and that all 33 organizations that had money taken would have it returned to them, a total of over $7000.
While the return of the money to all organizations including our own was a crucial victory, the most important fight is yet to come. Our main battle concerns the need for budgetary reform to assure that in the future there is adequate accountability for the way funds are administered and that groups like ours are not singled out for biased treatment.
We, the ODU College Republicans will continue this fight and will not stand down until a satisfactory conclusion is achieved.
Julius Lacano is Chairman of the Old Dominion College Republicans.
Related story: University of Colorado, Boulder College Republicans are Denied Funding.
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