Lack of discipline and policy lets executive go hog wild

By Zaren White

In most workplaces, an employee would not have the option of charging personal vehicle repairs to their work credit card, letting the account accrue interest, and then paying it back when they had the money or felt like it. In most workplaces, employee credit card use is carefully monitored – you can’t just opt to put a personal expenditure on your work credit card for the hell of it – and abuse of access to credit accounts would result in reprimand and likely dismissal.

The MUN Students’ Union is not most workplaces. Whether it be a charge of $305 at Cora’s in Feb. 2009, $165 at the Sundance in 2009 (the latter for which there is no receipt and no rationale for the expenditure listed), or $7.68 at Starbucks in Nov. 2009, I find it hard to believe that any of these purchases were for the betterment of the student populace of Memorial University. Especially that venti mochaccino.

As a student who’s supported and even defended MUNSU in recent years, I was appalled to see the credit card statements for executive directors that were compiled by a committee tasked with investigating anonymous claims that execs had been indulging in perks.

I don’t know what’s more upsetting – that supposedly mature and intelligent adults whom we’re paying to represent us have demonstrated a brazen disregard for managing our money and no remorse for exorbitant, unjustifiable spending on work credit cards, or that our Board of Directors appears to accept this unchecked spending complacently.

It’s one thing to lose $100,000 on Snoop Dogg, but quite another to squander union funds on reckless spending for what can only be personal expenses. No office has that many “staff lunches.” And if they do, they shouldn’t be.

Responsible workplaces have procedures in place to ensure responsible spending complete with allocations and caps. Not everyone can go to conferences. Cab rides should not be unlimited. Again, it seems MUNSU isn’t a responsible workplace. I can only deduce that the Board sees no problem with the governance of the executive directors – otherwise, wouldn’t the individuals responsible have been met with reprimand, legal and otherwise?

This year’s MUNSU executive seems to be telling me that, once elected, there’s no need to pay for your own food or rides. Just take Jiffy and charge it to the union. Spend students’ money like it’s your own. That’s a perk, in addition to the generous salaries and BlackBerries that go with the position.

Thirty-eight dollars and eighty-seven cents – that’s how much I paid this semester in union fees for membership in the MUN Students’ Union. And whether it was $38.87 as a full-time student or $16.66 as a part-time student, you paid in to this too. So did every single one of the 13,000 undergraduate students on the St. John’s campus.

It seems to me, that the undergraduate student body has a tendency to forget that the executive directors that we elect – to work on external affairs, research, and communications, campaigns, advocacy, student life, and finances and services – work for us. They’re our employees. They are paid – very well by student job standards, and with the ample help of full-time support staff – to work for us.

Sources say they don’t have to record hours in order to be paid. They are expected to work 35 hours a week and be in the office between the hours of 8:30 am and 4:30 pm while not in classes, but this is not enforced. I find it hard to trust that our executive works at all – so how can I trust that they work tirelessly and ethically?

Every year, we elect (or acclaim) five executives of equal power to represent the needs and concerns of the undergraduate student body, the membership of the union. A union is an organized group of people, in our case, of students, who band together to achieve a goal. I’m starting to question whether or not all of our current executive directors remember why they’re there, or whom they’re working for.

I question the utility of this flat structure. It’s problematic that the executive directors answer only to themselves and, to some extent in theory, to the Board of Directors. Unless any one executive director takes it upon themselves to enforce work ethic, productivity, professionalism, and, well, responsible decision marking, it seems that these credit card wielding students go unchecked.

When everyone is your boss, no one is your boss. And like all employees of any organization, those employees who fail to do their jobs competently and ethically – let alone to the best of their abilities and resources – should be fired. We put students at the helm of out students’ union in order to keep the power with students. I would like to trust that they would not abuse the absence of an explicitly outlined policy for personal gain and the delusion of being a big time roller.

When I saw the credit card statements that, outrageous as they were, did not warrant reprimand, I was embarrassed to be represented by the MUN Students’ Union. The question is, does the Board of Directors care enough about the students they represent to step up, embrace their elected responsibility, and demand repercussions?

Zaren White

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