The Ethnic Student Council (ESC) voted to amend Article X: ESC Subcommittee Good Standing Policy from its constitution during its General Body Meeting (GBM) on Wednesday, October 24. If approved by Rules Committee, this change makes participation that was previously required at events hosted by the ESC optional for organizations under the ESC umbrella.
The amendment stems from multiple weeks of issues between the ESC, organizations in the ESC subcommittee, and individuals from the Student Government Association (SGA).
According to the October 14 meeting of the SGA Senate, it was brought up by Junior Senator Mark Krupinski that the ESC is both a Recognized Student Organization (RSO) and a subcommittee of the Committee on Student Interests (CSI), and that “there was one club in the ESC that was not happy with having to do stuff for [ESC].” In response, Sophomore Senator Nasir Montalvo stated he felt that “the ESC should be abolished and there should just be a Subcommittee Head.” Other senators also agreed that the ESC should not be an RSO and that it was unconstitutional, as an RSO, to request deliverables and mandate participation from constituent RSOs.
Upon hearing that certain organizations had issues with the ESC, President Camilla Vasquez called for 1-on-1s with presidents from each of the 11 cultural organizations in the subcommittee. “A lot of people had resentment towards ESC… [the e-board] didn’t know how to fix this, so we went to every single president or their e-board members to talk about what issues they had and what concerns they had with us.” She further explained that the ESC was facing a lot of communication issues, as organizations and individuals were circumventing both the ESC RSO and their Subcommittee Head to directly consult the SGA regarding how to bring down the ESC.
“After the 1-on-1s, we found out the issue,” said Vasquez, referring to required participation in ESC events, “and it was like, oh, okay, if we had done this a lot earlier it would have been better.”
Organizations under the ESC subcommittee remain rather split about the change. The president of Indian Undergraduate Association (IUA) Dhru Patel commented, “For IUA, it’s easy to [participate] since we have such a large group, but other clubs [that] are not as big, it’s hard for them to balance running their own clubs and do every ESC event.” He further explained that, this semester, the ESC had three events in the span of five weeks. Patel noted it is difficult to balance these with each organization’s own events, GBMs, and time to get to know new members.
In contrast, a representative from Filipino Association of Stevens Tech (FAST) at the October 24 meeting said that their organization has “never had any big problems with the ESC requirements,” and that “collaborative events are good because they encourage cross-membership.” David Kim, the President of Korean Student Association (KSA), echoed similar sentiments in an email to The Stute. “Although the change to the constitution has liberated ethnic RSOs from mandatory participation, I feel as though it also weakened the bond that kept the ethnic RSOs on campus unified,” explained Kim. “It’s tough to comment on the changes,” he added, “although the article in the constitution was unconstitutional and there were a lot of commitments that needed to be made for all the ESC events, the way that it was done left an atmosphere of hostility.”
However, both presidents agreed on the importance of the ESC. Patel explained, “most of the ESC events, like Unity for example, are good for clubs to participate in, and they really bring clubs together.” Kim also stressed the importance of the ESC, calling it “the central point in which ethnic RSOs can celebrate the diversity that we have on campus,” “a symbol of unity,” and without it there is “nothing that holds us together as ethnic organizations.”
On the differing perspectives, Vasquez commented, “Some people are focused on trying to get rid of us, some people are focused on trying to clarify us, and some people are kind of like, why are we even doing this? We’re wasting our time.”
Although the cultural organizations themselves seem to be on the same page and content with the ESC’s post-constitutional changes, several SGA senators and Dakota Van Deursen, Vice President of Student Interests (VPSI), are working closely with the ESC and the presidents of the organizations to possibly amend the duality of the ESC in the coming months.
Currently, the ESC is the only SGA entity to have this dual status. Like an RSO, they have an elected executive board comprised of members from different cultural organizations. This executive board plans and coordinates with all the different RSOs to host many events throughout the year, including Chip and Dip, Around the World, and ESC Thanksgiving, as well as the Unity Carnival and Unity Showcase for the student body. Like a traditional subcommittee head, the organization holds regular meetings, assists organizations with budgeting each semester, and passes any messages from the SGA downstream. In addition, President Vasquez attends SGA Senate meetings weekly to provide reports on the subcommittee and serves on the SGA’s CSI, chaired by the VPSI.
Sophomore Senator Matthew Cunningham, who is working with the ESC, explained his perspective. “My hope with the Ethnic Student Council is to make its bureaucratic structure similar to the other subcommittees of the CSI,” and that the intention is “to clarify its organizational structure.” He added, “I truly hope that with this change, the ESC can continue providing the Stevens community with informative and beneficial programming.” Junior Senator Mark Krupinski added, “with the change to the constitution, the problems that RSOs had with the ESC are likely going to be resolved. The future resolution will clarify internal procedures for the SGA.”
Vasquez described the dual-status of the organization as “unique, but very required.” She explained, “what the ESC has as an RSO, that other subcommittees don’t, are the events. These are huge events, with anywhere from 200 to 300 per event.”
Both membership and funding would be harder for the organization to acquire if they lost RSO status, according to Vasquez. “We all joined because we wanted to represent our culture in the ESC e-board,” she stated. “Why take out diversity? All of this money set to go on diversity. You don’t even know where [the money’s] going to go, Unity would be solely [up] to the discretion of the VPSI and VPF.”
Addressing these concerns, Van Deursen clarified that “the VPF and VPSI have no deciding power. They co-chair the Senate Budget Committee, which recommends budget changes to the SGA Senate to approve as a whole.”
Were the ESC to become a Non-RSO, they would receive lower priority than RSOs for SGA funding. Though the current and previous SGA Cabinets have favored the ESC, there is no guarantee that future administrations would protect the ESC and continue supporting and funding its events if they lost RSO status.
According to Van Deursen, after a meeting with the ESC on November 1, the ESC would work with the SGA to rename their subcommittee component as the “Cultural Subcommittee.” The ESC would exist as an RSO under the Cultural Subcommittee. Discussion on this subject is still ongoing and future developments will be closely followed by The Stute.
“This issue is more than just constitutional changes, it’s a debate on what should be done with diversity,” explained Vasquez. “And with the ESC storage space going away, we don’t know what’s going on. I’ve gone to talk to Dean Nilsen, and he himself told me he doesn’t know.”
The Ethnic Student Council’s next event is ESC Thanksgiving, which will take place on November 15 at 9 p.m. in Bissinger.
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