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Last updated: Thursday, Feb. 9, 1:34 a.m.
Columnists | Opinion

Columnist: UMSG mistakes lead to mistrust in UMaine students

By Michael Shepherd
Posted on Feb. 15, 2010, at 2:54 a.m.

Throughout this school year, many of our Student Government leaders have shown that a high level of student confidence in them is unwarranted, culminating in the recent oversight on deserved salary payment to an executive.

They will be refuting this at upcoming meetings, I’m sure.

The General Student Senate told us students to vote no on Question 4 (TABOR II) in Maine’s November referendum. I don’t think the educated students of University of Maine need assistance behind the curtain from some of our most partisan leaders.

Consider the incident when seven senators — Zachary Jackman, Benjamin Goodman, Elias Elder, Nathan Wildes, Pardis Delijani, Warren Varney and Mary Emmi — walked out on an emergency meeting to discuss results of a contested election for the Interfraternity Council presidency. Their walkout put the body under quorum.

Fair election practices were not used during the contest between Colby Malcom and Ian McKinnon, which Malcom won by seven votes. When the motion of a revote came up, the seven senators thought it would be acceptable to abandon their elected duties. The seven had earlier voted against a revote.

Goodman defended his group, saying, “Scrapping the election is a completely different issue and I think it was important that we had all senators present.” They didn’t seem to care about that when they were voting for their position. Advancing their position was fine — losing was out of the question.

Now, SG officials have been involved in an oversight in which Vice President Nyssa Gatcombe was not compensated for over a month of her term because of an issue with her GPA from the fall semester (“Student Government failed to pay executive,” Mario Moretto, Feb. 11). Gatcombe’s low GPA stemmed from an undisclosed medical issue. One must have at least a cumulative 2.0 GPA and a 2.0 the semester before election to be elected and paid.

Vice President of Financial Affairs Justin Labonte admitted that the rules were not followed. The Maine Campus article on this situation said, “Instead of examining Gatcombe’s grades for the spring 2009 semester, in which Gatcombe met the requirement, Labonte followed a precedent that examined the fall 2009 semester. … After realizing the discrepancy between the rules as written and the precedent being practiced, Gatcombe was compensated for the time she had worked.”

“I understand it’s super important to read documents and be careful. But the rules could easily be misunderstood,” said Vice President of Student Organizations Samantha Shulman.

She’s right. It’s super duper important to know what you’re doing. This is, therefore, a reportable oversight. It took anonymous sources to break this story.

A senator named “Dayna” is upset, according to an online comment on The Maine Campus’s article. I’m assuming it was Sen. Dayna Margarita, who said she was “appalled,” “ticked off,” “very disappointed” and “appalled” (again) that this story made this newspaper. She called Moretto “unprofessional” for reporting it.

“During our meeting Tuesday, we went into an executive session to protect Nyssa’s privacy regarding this issue and we hoped Mario would have been more respectful of our wishes,” “Dayna” wrote.

Apparently, some student senators believe that Student Government’s mistakes should be swept under the rug. Don’t we deserve to know that one of our elected leaders was not paid in a timely manner? Moretto reported that Gatcombe was attempting to get medical withdrawal from a class — that is the most revealing he got. Her privacy was not violated.

The senate also, I believe, didn’t go into executive session to protect her privacy. They used “personal issues” as a mechanism to stifle this story. It seems quite evident that GSS went into executive session to hide. The anonymous senators coming forward with information should be praised.

The least Student Government could do is apologize to UMaine students for a large oversight and subsequent attempt at a cover-up. Whether they do or not is a decent indicator of whether we see can them as trustworthy. If they made a mistake, we could have forgiven them.

Secrecy and dishonesty, however, are unforgivable.

This will be Michael Shepherd’s last regular column for The Maine Campus. Eryk Salvaggio will be the new weekly columnist for Monday.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010, 2:54 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.

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  • Anonymous

    You discuss the mistakes of Student Government, however it is poor journalism to assume that the “Dayna” who commented was anyone in particular. If you’re going disparage against another group, you should probably uphold the proper etiquette of reporting.

  • Robert

    The paltry level of “journalism” exhibited in this op-ed has brought the degree of integrity displayed within The Maine Campus to a new low: quoting online commentators, revealing the private health matters of a student, and making bold assumptions that do not lend to enhancing credibility (i.e. “I believe). Michael Shepard writes that it’s “super duper important to know what you’re doing”. Perhaps he should take his own advice, however riddled with sophomoric slang it may be, and rediscover how to commit actual journalism, instead of submitting his laundry list of shoddy reporting.

  • Anonymous

    Hey look, more negative comments. Maybe we can all make the Maine Campus Newspaper too since that’s all a certain “Columnist” can base his “Reports” on. Then again maybe not since this was his last column.

    As Mr. Shepherd wrote,

    [“During our meeting Tuesday, we went into an executive session to protect Nyssa’s privacy regarding this issue and we hoped Mario would have been more respectful of our wishes,” “Dayna” wrote.

    Apparently, some student senators believe that Student Government’s mistakes should be swept under the rug. Don’t we deserve to know that one of our elected leaders was not paid in a timely manner? Moretto reported that Gatcombe was attempting to get medical withdrawal from a class — that is the most revealing he got. Her privacy was not violated.]

    So what your saying is, you wanted to sit in on the meeting and get all the information about this issue even at the expense of invading her medical privacy and report it to the entire campus for everyone to know. Unfortunately for you that is not, nor should it be, any of your business so you had to resort to quoting an online comment which only further shows your ignorance.

    And as a side note you mentioned “Moretto reported that Gatcombe was attempting to get medical withdrawal from a class — that is the most revealing he got. Her privacy was not violated.” Her privacy was not violated because you were denied sitting in on the meeting by the entire student government as you should have been. As far as I am concerned that makes the final score Student Government 1 Maine Campus 0… Good Game to you sir.

  • Big Papa

    While Mr. Shepherds columns seem to be border on the unpopular, at least Mr. Shepherd is taking the time to contribute not only to The Maine Campus, but also to the UMaine Orono community as a whole. Like his style or leave it, at least he is making an effort.

    By the way, Mr. Shepherd writes an opinionated column. While op-eds should contain factual information and integrity, journalistic reporting they are not. As such, they are not subject to the same standards that a piece of journalism would be.

  • Alicia

    To be honest, I doubt that the Maine Campus has done anything wrong, because Nyssa didn’t sign a HIPPA form now did she?

  • Sock puppet

    none of the things you’ve outlined are reasons for a new low, which is not possible since we are at absolute zero already.

    There is nothing wrong with quoting online commentators and the author didn’t reveal any confidential information. Public information is just that, public. That is what a paper is supposed to do, reveal information. Are you getting it?

  • Bill

    As a relatively intelligent individual, I am almost embarrassed to call Mr. Shepherd a classmate. Over the past several months, he has managed to use his three talking points to write a series of columns without performing any source checks. Now, it has been said that because this is an opinion piece he does not need to do so. Normally I would be inclined to agree, but in this case, I feel that I can hold Mr. Shepherd to a higher standard. Why? Because he is paid (just like the Student Government officials that he complains about) to write for the Maine Campus. In fact, over the past two semesters he has been paid on more than one occasion to cover the Student Senate for the Maine Campus. As the Maine Campus’ own bylaws state:

    “Student journalists are expected to meet commonly accepted journalistic standards of accuracy, fairness, honesty, impartiality and professionalism; to seek the truth; to weigh the quality of evidence; to identify bias in themselves; and to support conclusions or assertions with verifiable source material. Student staff members will be expected to identify, explain and accept responsibility for mistakes made, including the publication of clarifications and retractions.”

    Futhermore, it seems that Mr. Shepherd has been selected to become the next editor-in-chief of the Maine Campus. As such, he will have almost complete authority over the paper, something that he fails to mention in his opinion piece. There seems to be a clear disconnect here. Mr. Shepherd wants full disclosure from members of one student funded organization (Student Government), but shies away from any disclosure on the part of another STUDENT FUNDED ORGANIZATION THE MAINE CAMPUS.

    Let’s some up.
    1) Mr. Shepherd is paid student money, collected through the mandatory communication fee, to report for the Maine Campus
    2) Mr. Shepherd uses his own articles as sources for his editorials
    3) Mr. Shepherd seems to oppose disclosure on the part of the Maine Campus A STUDENT FUNDED ORGANIZATION
    4) Next year, Mr. Shepherd will be paid a substantial amount of student money to be editor-in-chief of the Maine Campus. Yet the students have NO say in his selection process. selection process, that involves being selected by the individuals hired by his predecessor.

    As Mr. Shepherd writes “Secrecy and dishonesty, however, are unforgivable.”

    Please, heed your own words.

  • less

    You don’t need to SIGN a HIPAA form for the federal regulation of HIPAA to be in forced. The forms you are given at employment are notice to the employee that the employer follows HIPAA, per federal regulations. Get your acronyms correct and educate yourself on the law. http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/index.html

  • Alicia

    And how do you know that UMSG actually follows HIPAA?

    http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/understanding/coveredentities/index.html

    (Using your website, mind you)

    I don’t see how UMSG is a covered entity seeing that it doesn’t provide health insurance.

    And give me a break about the acronym.