The disagreement was over the charter language for the newly formed SUBU - Student Union of Brown University - and no one at its inaugural May 3 meeting in Alumnae Hall's Crystal Room could quite agree whether decision-making is one word or two.
For the record: It's one word, but hyphenated.
Given that sort of disagreement, the logic of collective bargaining for consumers and the union's somewhat vague purpose, students like Zachary Reiss-Davis '08 quickly discounted SUBU.
"SUBU appears to be trying to create a truly democratic and communistic method of running a student government, which cannot work in a group this size," said Reiss-Davis, who attended the first meeting but quit the union. "It's a really cool organizational concept, but it's not a practical one in terms of getting things done on this campus."
But 400 undergraduates joined the union last semester, with another 150 signing up this fall. Eighty-four attended the first meeting, which was held during spring exams. Many said they joined for the nifty membership cards, and others came to the meeting out of curiosity, boredom or both. Yet the hefty demand for an organization like SUBU and the discussion in its first meeting reveals latent disagreement over the University's role in providing services and its students' role in demanding those services.
SUBU emphasizes its lack of hierarchy and its use of general assembly meetings, which allow union members to propose any initiative they wish in a style that follows as closely as possible to direct democracy. For this reason, SUBU leaders hesitated to say what issues the group might take up, but organizers Scott Rasmussen '09.5 and Francesca Contreras '10 said transparency on the Undergraduate Finance Board and grant-based financial aid are likely to be discussed at the next general assembly, scheduled for Sept. 27 in Sayles Hall.
SUBU leaders said the group was founded in response to perceived student indifference and an aversion toward existing campus forums for change. "I think there is a general consensus or a fear that there is student apathy, so we wanted to give people better institutions for student involvement," Rasmussen said.
He and other union leaders are active with Students for a Democratic Society, the leftist student group that led anti-war protests on college campuses decades ago and was recently revived at Brown, pushing for fair labor practices and opposing companies that contract with the U.S. military.
SDS members looked to other models of student unions when forming SUBU. Student unionization isn't as common in the United States as abroad, Rasmussen said.
Undergraduates at McGill University in Montreal, from which SUBU founder Mike Da Cruz '08.5 transferred, used a labor-organizing model to successfully oppose a measure that favored student loans over financial aid grants. Dacruz declined to comment for this article.
Contreras and Rasmussen pointed to those successes as an answer to the criticism that collective bargaining doesn't work with undergraduates, who unlike many workers, pay for their services and can withdraw their support and go elsewhere.
"SUBU goes against the standard conception of unionization, but it's still a very valid concept," Rasmussen said. "This is more like a consumer union. We are consuming a product that the University is making - our education. ... We're based on the idea that if you can get a lot of students together for or against something, you can make serious change."
Questions of legitimacy
The heavy SDS involvement in the union drew criticism at its first meeting when then-outgoing Undergraduate Council of Students President John Gillis '07 spoke repeatedly about the legitimacy problem the group faces.
"Are we trying to represent all students, or are we trying to represent students who are interested in a specific topic?" Gillis asked in May, arguing that SUBU cannot realistically speak to the University about student needs when it represents only a small, homogenous corner of the student body.
"It was amusing to hear SUBU say that because they had a hundred of the really liberal, politically active people show up to a meeting, they could say they represent all 6,000 Brown students," Reiss-Davis said. "SUBU's claim to authority is that they are not elected. UCS's is that they are."
Contreras said those concerns are presently valid, but that the group is still in its infant stages and has the potential to grow into a representative of student concerns. "UCS's legitimacy came about over time - actively - and it didn't just drop out of nowhere. The student union will gain that sort of place over time," she said.
It seems UCS leaders at least respect that possibility, for if SUBU's first meeting attracted plenty of SDS members, it was also a who's who of student government leadership.
UCS President Michael Glassman '09, one of several student government officials who attended the May meeting, did not respond to requests for an interview.
Rasmussen said he hopes the question of legitimacy is applied not only to SUBU, but also to UCS. "Voter turnout is low," he said. "It has this hierarchical structure. When I vote for someone for UCS, I don't know where they stand on pretty much anything."
"SUBU should make us think critically about UCS as our representative body," he said.
Contreras and Rasmussen added that SUBU is not intended as a UCS replacement but as a complement. As UCS has lately focused on campus life issues - recently IPTV, meal plans and DVD rentals - SUBU hopes to occupy a niche that focuses on big-picture issues like tuition and financial aid.
"Students need something other than UCS," said Deborah Vacs Renwick '09, who signed up with SUBU after hearing friends describe the concept. "Given UCS's track record, they've never tackled a big issue effectively in the two years I've been here."
The Herald reported Friday that UCS will focus this year on reforming the University's environmental policies and increasing student involvement on the Corporation, the University's highest governing body, which suggests the two groups could end up addressing the same issues.
"UCS is focused on any issue relative to Brown University. One of the big ticket issues we're possibly bouncing around is reviewing financial aid," said UCS Student Activities committee chair Drew Madden '10. "We'd like to find out more information about how financial aid is determined. We want to bounce around ideas about how the student body feels about financial aid. We want to get the full opinion before going forward."
Madden said UCS is holding an open forum tonight at 8 p.m. in Petteruti Lounge. "If SUBU members feel UCS isn't focusing on big issues, they can come to the meeting and tell us what they want, and we will work on that," he said.