ASUM makes final push to override Blunt’s student curator bill veto

By Joey Soto

Published Sept. 9, 2008

Supporters of the student curator bill took to the Missouri Capitol today to try and build momentum to override Gov. Matt Blunt's veto.

ASUM Board Chairman Craig Stevenson presented responses to the concerns Blunt released when he vetoed the bill in July.

The bill would have given the student representative to the UM Board of Curators voting rights on the board, but only if Missouri lost a congressional district in the 2010 census. That’s because the board is composed of nine members, one from each district, and the student representative would fill the ninth spot.

The override vote will go to the Missouri Senate on Wednesday when veto session begins. Even if the bill fails to gain the two-thirds majority to advance to the House for another override vote, Stevenson said ASUM would continue fighting for a student vote on the board next year.

Sen. Chuck Graham, D-Columbia, sponsored the bill and said he would sponsor a similar bill in the next session if it comes to that in hope that the new governor would sign it into law.

Stevenson opened his presentation citing the success that the bill saw in both houses of the General Assembly.

"It's not everyday that a bill with 100 votes in the House and 31 in the Senate is vetoed," Stevenson said.

Complementing the approval from the General Assembly, Stevenson emphasized the student support for the bill.

"This isn't just something ASUM is pushing because we want to make sure we get it," Stevenson said. "The student governments are behind us and the students are behind us."

The first of Blunt's concerns with the bill was that it would change the Board of Curators from a lay board into a stakeholder board.

Stevenson said the UM system has evolved into a stakeholder system over the last several years, and it would only be appropriate to change the board makeup to fit that conversion.

"Students are paying the majority of the operating budget for universities now," Stevenson said. "With students taking the debt with them after graduating, the system is becoming much more of a stakeholder than in the past."

Another concern voiced by curators in their opposition to the bill was the potential for a student bias when voting. Missouri Students Association Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays said the concerns cited by the board were misplaced and challenged them to find an issue about which current student representative Tony Luetkemeyer was uninformed.

"Everyone has some tie or a bias," Mays said. "It's more important to come to the board with an informed perspective."

Some of the concerns felt by both Blunt and the board have been circulating for decades, Graham said.

"We heard these same fears when the original bill was passed in 1984," Graham said. “The same fears about letting a student into the closed meeting. And none of those fears have ever come to fruition."

The voting privileges granted to 18-year-olds across the nation make Graham particularly in favor of giving a student a vote on the board of curators, he said.

"We allow these young people to vote for governor, vote for president of the United States," Graham said. "We allow these individuals to fight for us in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for some reason there is a small group of people on the Board of Curators who don't believe they have the ability to exercise their right to vote on that board."

Stevenson said one of the objectives of ASUM's fight is to expand the avenues through which communication can take place.

"I would like to see more communication with the students as a whole," Stevenson said. "Unfortunately it looks like that may not happen."

Graham said he finds (the board's) behavior to be inappropriate as men operating a business.

"I find it condescending," Graham said. "They don't even want to meet with the very people they are there to educate."

In addition to the bill being popular among students, Graham, a co-sponsor of the bill, said he believes the bill would solve a future problem Missouri is anticipated to face.

"I don't want to see that happen because that will be very damaging for the process in the future," Graham said.

With the upcoming census in 2010, Missouri is expected to lose a congressional district. Missouri law states that no district may have more than one curator representative. 

"This allows us to proactively solve that problem before we run into it," Graham said. "Otherwise we're going to end up with a food fight among the eight remaining congressional districts as to who gets an extra curator."

Graham said he foresees the latter course of action to be detrimental to the board's efficacy.