The most confusing aspect of this year’s push for Student Association incorporation is the simplicity of the SA leadership’s proposal.
Incorporation. That’s it.
No disassembling of the Assembly. No Representative Council. No amendments, no referendum, no real votes even.
The SA Executive Board is just moving around some paperwork to change the way the state recognizes them as an organization.
By moving from an “association” to a not-for-profit 501(c)3 corporation, the SA will become a legal backstop for individual students who could otherwise be liable for lawsuits resulting from SA events and activities.
If someone were to slip and fall in the Pipe Dream office — because the ceiling had leaked, forming puddles — and he was feeling litigious, the paper’s staff, the SA president, their parents, etc., could have their names on the court documents. If the SA successfully incorporates, then the SA as a corporation will be our meta-defendant.
This is a good thing, if not an urgent issue. It’s not like there’s an eminent risk of an avalanche of lawsuits. But the SA is infinitely more ready to shoulder possible litigation than students.
That said, it’s hard for us to get excited about this at all. Again, this is a pretty simple matter.
And importantly, the SA’s dealings on the subject this year only serve to highlight just how fucked the entire process was last year.
The people who disseminated the outright falsehood that it was necessary to completely overhaul the constitution to incorporate the SA were either belligerent idiots or diabolical liars. That’s pretty much it.
The fact that the entire constitution was rewritten — setting aside the actual substantive value of the proposed changes — based on an entirely, completely, now undeniably false premise is just … well, fucked. We’ll stick with that.
Members of the current E-Board told Pipe Dream on Wednesday that they were surprised and angry when they found out that incorporation could be done on its own.
And these people made up a good portion of the street team pushing for the referendum last year. We wonder what the opposition is thinking now — the ones who were either skeptical, or completely didn’t believe, that rewriting the constitution was necessary for incorporation in the first place.
Oh well, it’s all settled law at this point. And the bad guys lost anyway.