The election is over. The people have decided; so now what in the hell does it all mean to you? If you are like almost everyone else, you didn’t vote.

 It’s okay, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. I’m not here to admonish you; I’m not your dad. Not a lot of people pay attention. After doing a limited amount of somewhat unreliable statistical work, I have come to the conclusion that there are roughly a thousand a people that go to this school that pay attention to how it’s run. It’s a lot like real life. Democracy is the net effect of a small group of interested parties doing what they think is best. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes it is not. In the case of ASPSU, it’s hard to tell. For the time being, I will remain optimistic, even though voter turnout was the lowest since 1998. Only 421 people voted that year. This year, it was around 800. That comes out to about 3.2 percent of the student population. Jonathan Sanford got 347 votes, which means that 1.3 percent of the student body voted in the new president. Not exactly a mandate. But they got the job. Let’s hope that they do it right. It is important that ASPSU understand that it doesn’t matter how many people voted for them now. The vast majority of students may not vote, but they still pay their tuition. That’s their real vote. Everyone participates in that manner and that needs to be recognized.

The Vanguard made a big deal about the low turnout—understandable, but if the voter turnout from the last two decades is examined, it becomes clear that low voter turnout is not uncommon. Ten percent is the highest recorded, and that was in 2005.

Voter turnout at PSU is traditionally low. That’s not going to change drastically anytime soon, no matter what the Elections Board does. They can hire thugs. They can try voodoo. It doesn’t matter. Turnout will be low. It is important to let this go and concentrate on the job. The low count is something the E-Board is going to have to deal with next year. I doubt there will be great gains, but it would be nice to see ten percent hit the polls next year. It’s happened before.

Mandate or no mandate, the new ASPSU has made a lot of promises; many of which involve re-structuring. Working everything out with the SFC and the E-Board, and solving all of the internal communication problems, will be a chore. That will be on top of trying to fulfill all of the more monumental tasks, such as reasonable childcare for students with kids, and dealing with high tuition costs.

Speaking of trying to save people money, the new SFC rode into office on the “No New Taxes” platform, almost to the point where I’m getting flashbacks of the 1988 Republican National Convention. The notion that there will be no rise in the student fee next year is fun to say, but the effects aren’t so great. Food for Thought Cafe, for example, lost half their money from the recent SFC foul-up and with no rise in fees, they may have to run just as hungry next year.

Running the committee that funds groups ranging from the Medieval Combat Club to the Daily Vanguard is going to be a difficult job this coming year. Many of these groups produce revenue and provide services. The name “student group” can be misleading. It sounds like something fun that kids get together to do after class. While that may be true to some extent, many vital roles are being filled by student groups on campus.

Food for Thought presents an interesting situation. Here is the crowning achievement of PSU values. It is green, green, and green. They provide quality vegan food from organic ingredients. They even grow some of their own ingredients right here on campus. The food is good and the prices are reasonable. You can feed yourself at Food for Thought for about the same amount you would spend at Subway. It’s also a regular stop on the tour when PSU shows off its bad self to potential students. This year, their budget went from about 100 thousand dollars to 50. The worst part is that this group actually produces revenue.

Poor SFC Chair Tanja Miljevic sent out an email to student group leaders informing them that since budgets have been cut, they would be more lenient about groups meeting forecasted revenue projections. Especially in cases where money earmarked for the products that were to be sold could not be bought because of the budget cuts.

I say “poor Tanja” because Miljevic has inherited quite the shitshow since Aimeera Flint stepped down from the position of Chair after the SFC debacle. I’m speaking specifically about when the SFC Crack Budget Team counted four million dollars twice. Now, there’s nothing wrong with counting twice just to be sure. But I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to write it down both times. And the errors kept piling up after that. Apparently, Wim Wiewel had approved one budget and the SFC another. They were supposed to be the same, but they weren’t. Then it turned out that there was almost a million dollars less collected from student fees than they thought. Oops. Oh wait, there’s more. Wiewel called for an increase in money for athletics. More scrambling. At the end of the day, we all lost a lot of money and now there is apparently going to be a fee freeze for next year.

Not raising fees sounds good. It feels good. In the end, it is going to cause a lot of headaches for a lot of people while only saving a few bucks. Student groups exist for a reason and what they do and what they stand for is part of the societal microcosm that is university life. They need funding. Promises of freezing fees will make for a difficult year, especially after just experiencing such harsh cuts.

The truth is that a 16 dollar increase in the student fee is not going to kill anyone. I do know that regular increases left unchecked can be a slippery slope. That is exactly why the budget process needs to be dealt with carefully by people who know what in the hell they are doing.

A lot of people are pissed about this. I don’t think anger is a useful response. There is no great evil lurking in the secret lair where the committee members plot to destroy PSU and its precious little student groups. It is nothing more than a small group of college folk trying to learn how to deal with a somewhat complicated set of circumstances. It needs to be taken into account that these are not professional budget specialists, and generally do not have a lot of experience. That is what goes on in a college setting. People learn how to do things. But these student operations have a dual role to fulfill. One is to teach students real world skills; the other is to actually do the things they are supposed to do. Mistakes will happen. If there is any lesson to be learned, it is that training should be a key element to the structure of the SFC. Lots of training.