Lack of transparency creates frustration in USG

The Undergraduate Student Government is intended to be the governing body of the undergraduate student population — a focal point for advocacy by connecting student voices to the USC administration for the overall improvement of the student experience.

 However, even within that definition, confusion and doubt has arisen surrounding the role of USG, leading to a fraught relationship between the organization and the student body. For USG Chief Communications Officer Shreya Chaudhary, the lack of transparency is one of the key issues that has ultimately led to distrust.

“Unfortunately, I think because of, oftentimes, the lack of transparency, amongst so many things, that’s one of the big things that has led to USG’s loss of trust with the student body,” said Chaudhary, a junior majoring in business administration.

For Alexia Sambrano, the co-executive director of the Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment, an ideal USG would be transparent. SAGE falls under the cultural assemblies that are under the programming department in USG’s executive branch. 

“[USG] would communicate everything to everyone in USG and to the student body,” said Sambrano, a junior majoring in neuroscience and cognitive science. “Any projects they have, any meetings they have with admin, what those meetings discuss and any changes that will be affecting the student body.” 

Currently, Sambrano said they feel like USG could do a better job at communicating updates and meetings with the student body. Considering the reckoning USG experienced last summer following the resignations of former President Truman Fritz and Vice President Rose Ritch under allegations of microaggressions and complicity, respectively, Sambrano expected USG to have a “wake up call.” 

“I think what’s been lacking has been just communication in terms of what exactly is going on to combat all of the things that they said they were going to combat over the summer,” Sambrano said. “So initiatives related to [diversity, equity and inclusion], whether it be the abolition of [Department of Public Safety] or structural changes within USC to make way for Black, Indigenous [people] and people of color to be in positions of leadership. So I would appreciate a lot more communication and transparency in terms of that.”

USG’s legislative committee posted a list of actionable items on Instagram Aug. 17 meant to address the list of demands Black students curated on @black_at_usc, faculty concerns and greater student demands. 

One of those actionable items was “publicizing upcoming meetings with administration/higher up and opening them up to the general student body (especially BIPOC) for comments and concerns.” The only meeting that has been publicized on the USG instagram following that post, however, was a USC DEI Council open meeting published Feb. 12, seven months after the initial listing.

Additionally, Sambrano also notes that within the programming branch, there’s been a lack of transparency with issues regarding budgets. On behalf of USG’s request, SAGE submitted three tentative budget proposals depending on whether the school year would be in-person, hybrid or online. When the organization was in the process of planning events for the fall semester, they found themselves without a budget until approximately halfway through September, according to Sambrano.

This presented itself as an issue when SAGE was in the process of planning Body Love Month, a program that typically takes place in the fall and focuses on body positivity and appreciation. SAGE was unable to properly plan the event given that they did not know how much money they had to work with, Sambrano said. 

“All we were told was just negotiate with talent as if you already have a budget,” Sambrano said. “But obviously, we can’t negotiate with talent if we don’t know what numbers we have to work with. And we weren’t even given a ballpark estimate of what exactly it was that we were receiving.”

By the time they received their budget, it was too late to file paperwork. Ultimately, SAGE had to move Body Love Month to the spring to avoid cancelling the program altogether because there was not a presiding officer. 

In an email to the Daily Trojan, USG Chief Financial Officer Zachariah Taymuree said that the late allocation of the Fall budget happened across all line items and that it was not particular to SAGE.

“The reason for this was simply because the USG Budget cannot be set without a CFO or Budget Committee,” Taymuree wrote. “Given that I was hired halfway through the month of September, it would not have been possible to set the budget at any point before my hiring.”

Nonetheless, Sambrano would like to see constant communication from USG. For programming and planning purposes, Sambrano would have preferred to receive early and consistent updates or at least be informed on conversations that USG has had with admin. Without this information, USG officers aren’t able to effectively do their jobs, Sambrano said. 

In terms of communication and transparency, Jaya Hinton, the co-executive director of Black Student Assembly, another cultural assembly within USG’s programming department, notes that accessibility to USG is important.

According to Hinton, USG needs to reach out to more groups, especially underrepresented communities, on campus to expand recruitment and diversify the organization, as well as become points of contact to understand student concerns.

“There are so many spaces designated for Black students, newsletters designated for those students that [USG] can put that information in to make sure they reach them, and they don’t,” said Hinton, a junior majoring in business administration. “They just use the channels that already mostly reach the same demographic that already makes up the majority of USG.”

For Hinton, a greater understanding of what USG’s powers and limitations entail is also necessary so students are able to make the most out of the organization on realistic terms and avoid frustration afterward. Hinton acknowledges that although the USG Senate can come up with “a million good goals,” what matters most is what is done upon the resolution landing on President Carol Folt’s desk.

“All a resolution really does is make a statement,” Hinton said. “[For example], this Senate wants 50,000 more dollars to distribute among our cultural assemblies to make sure that their needs are met. President Folt can throw [the resolution] away and then there’s nothing that happens after that.”

Currently, both Hinton and Sambrano do not have a clear understanding of what initiatives are being worked on within USG outside of programming, something that Hinton finds concerning on a wider scale. 

“I really have no idea what the majority of the senators are working on at any given time, or the cabinet is working at any given time,” Hinton said. “Even in USG, I have no idea what’s happening … because I know if I don’t know, nobody else could possibly know, especially a freshman who’s never stepped foot on campus — they probably have no idea what USG even means.”

According to Hinton, USG needs to be proactive and consistent when it comes to updating the student body. It is USG’s job to maintain that transparency, Hinton said. 

A potential avenue for disbursement of information takes place on the USG website. If students want to be informed about current senate legislation, they can go to USG’s website under the legislative branch — scroll all the way to the bottom — to access the senate legislation tracker for the 2020-21 school year. There is a senate database located there as well that leads students to an incomplete Google drive whose minutes for senate meetings have not been updated since Oct. 13.

Under the “resources” tab of the USG website, almost all of the information has not been updated since the 2019-20 school year. The budget is from 2019-20, as well as the senate database linked there, and even the office hours that list former USG executives Trenton Stone and Mahin Tahsin as USG president and vice president, respectively, still have not been changed.

According to Chaudhary, one of her main goals was to revamp the USG website. Fixing the website was also a general USG plan following conservations surrounding restructuring, Chaudhary said. However, due to a changing team and plans, the massive overhaul that was originally planned did not come into fruition. 

“I think it was everything that happened after restructuring that just led to everything kind of being thrown off,” Chaudhary said. “And so it’s really about trying to complete as much as we can, within this term, to set a solid foundation for the next.”

Moving forward, Speaker of the Senate Ruben Romeo said that it’s important to continue to make information digestible and accessible in order for students to take advantage of USG’s resources. 

“I think it’s highly an accessibility issue,” said Romeo, a senior majoring in health promotion and disease prevention. “The fact that nobody knows they can write a resolution by being a student leader, the fact that people don’t know when or how senate meetings are hosted or the fact that this can actually get put into an admin’s inbox or desk for when they get that resolution passed — these are things all students should know.”

For Romeo, connecting the student body to this sort of information comes in various forms such as infographics that make senate meetings less daunting spaces, updated legislation and advocacy trackers or making legislation more accessible. While USG has spent time this year focusing on internal regroup and restructure, Romeo hopes that the next leadership will aim to address accessibility issues.  

“I hope that these attitudes of DEI, being embedded in everything, being accessible to the public, transpire to the next leadership that gets elected,” Romeo said.