This past weekend, ASG had a meeting, sort-of. According to the Daily Tar Heel, over half of ASG’s own members failed to show enough interest in the organization to attend its monthly meeting. This, in turn, prevented the group from obtaining quorum, which means that they were unable to vote on any legislation or accomplish much of anything. Just when I thought the group couldn’t be anymore useless, they have proven that even I overestimated them. Not even the lure of salaries and big expense accounts could persuade the delegates to attend the meeting. If nothing else, lack of interest by ASG’s own membership underscores the general uselessness of the organization. If I’m paying you to attend these meetings, and you can’t even bother to show up, in the words of Anthony Dent, “that’s really lame.”
Now generally, an effective chairman will ensure that he will have quorum before calling a meeting. According to the DTH article, it seems that Mr. Bhula, who heads the organization, had a pretty good idea that most of his people wouldn’t be showing up. So, this raises the question: Why did he hold the meeting if he knew that no one would show up? Let’s be honest here. It’s not like ASG didn’t incur any expenses in the course of this little fiasco. There’s the nice hotel rooms, the car rentals, and whatever else these people like to blow money on. So, in holding the meeting, Mr. Bhula incurred a series of unnecessary expenses, and this at a time when everyone from the Governor on down is looking to hold down unnecessary costs. This speaks to the general unaccountability that so characterizes ASG and its minions. Because Mr. Bhula isn’t elected by the students of this system and because the students of the UNC system have no say in the operations of ASG, what does he care if ASG wastes a couple thousand dollars on a meeting that accomplishes nothing? He’s not paying for it.
On a more positive note, it’s nice to see that some people inside ASG have finally gotten a clue and given what’s effectively a vote of no confidence to the organization. Despite Mr. Bhula’s protestations that “We’re doing work,” ASG has accomplished nothing of benefit to the students it purports to represent. Its latest project is to gain a vote for Mr. Bhula on the UNC Board of Governors. Given Hogan Medlin’s indication that such “power” on the UNC-CH Board of Trustees is generally useless, it’s small wonder ASG can’t even muster a quorum anymore. They’re just not doing anything important.