Letter to the editor

UC vanishing act

By the time this is printed, we’ll already know whether UW-RF is still a United Council member, but I have something to say about the referendum. I personally have had experience with United Council through Student Senate, and as former vice president, I have worked thoroughly with their staff members on many different issues, including the very successful turnout UW-RF had for this past year’s Women’s Leadership Conference.

More importantly, I would like to say that this referendum is different from the last one and goes beyond political ideologies -- it’s not about whether UC is “too liberal” or not, and it’s not about conservatives wanting out and liberals wanting to stay in. It’s about having the student body making an informed decision about what UC is supposed to do and what it has actually done. Students are coming out of what appears to be nowhere to encourage students to vote “yes.”

Until last week, UC only communicated with Student Senate, and only visit when we were up for referendum. Now that UW-RF is threatening to tighten up UC’s budget by thousands of dollars, we see them actually reaching out to our campus and recruiting students to help in their campaign. I would like to know where half of these students that are helping campaign for UC were since the last referendum, and how close they were working with UC prior to this week.

I would like to end by saying that no one knows the needs of the UW-RF student body better than its own students. UC concentrates a large amount of time in lobbying issues that do not pertain to our campus. The fact is that UC is far more connected with schools on the other side of the state, especially UW-Madison, and pushes issues that only directly affect that campus and area. We don’t need that, and for that fact we don’t need UC.

Liz de la Torre
Student