Former UW System student (like myself) Kevin Binversie on the United  Council of UW Student Governments:

Never before have I been more proud to be a BluGold (UW-Eau Claire, Class of 2002), than I was last week Thursday.

It was the request of my alma mater’s student council  that led to the Joint Finance Committee’s vote to cut the “mandatory refundable fee” the UW System charges to finance United Council. UC is the so-called nonpartisan lobbying group for UW System students which has been around since 1960.

The move now forces United Council to personally appeal to students at its 10 schools where students currently pay membership dues of $3 per semester. In the past, the money to finance the organization was automatically charged to students as a line-item to their tuition costs. Students not wanting to pay the fee would have to personally request refunds. …

To label United Council as “pointless” and “incompetent” is almost an insult to the definition of both of those words. The organization continually says its primary goal is to lobby for cuts in tuition costs and increasing in financial aid. While typically getting the aid (in the form of more government-subsidized student loans), tuition continually skyrocketed as the group often laid down to the will of the UW Regents. Over the past decade alone, tuition rates have taken off at UW-System schools. In 2001-02, average undergraduate tuition was $3,568 at Madison, $3,462 at Milwaukee and $2,776 at the other four-year schools. By 2011-12 it was $8,592 for Madison, $7,669 for Milwaukee and $5,970 at places like Eau Claire, Green Bay and La Crosse.

Those figures do not include room and board costs.

At the same time, United Council must have felt they had to keep with the rise in tuition costs. In 2001-02, per student per semester membership was only $1.25, or $2.50 a school year. As mentioned above, today it$3 per student per semester, or $6 a school year.

With tuition up over 120 percent over the last decade, why exactly would the chief lobbying organization committed to keeping it under control “reward itself” by increasing membership dues by 140 percent during the same time frame?

No wonder students have wised up to United Council’s empty promises are asking for a refund and for the group to justify its existence to them. They’re not getting their money’s worth and it is likely they never have.

So if UC has failed miserably at keeping tuition under control, what exactly does the group do?

Why help advance the liberal agenda of course.

State Democrats have relied on United Council for years as aready-made group of protesters for anything from Voter ID to staging a zombie protests at Special Olympics events in 2011 (United Council officially disavowed the activity, but they were at Rep. Robin Vos’ office only hours before the main event). 

Glancing at its staff bios gives you plenty of empty platitudes about “social justice” and “student empowerment.”Stay on Google long enough and you’ll wonder if a prerequisite for employment is activism in liberal causes or Democratic campaigns.

Now that United Council has lost its subsidy of confiscated money from students it barely represents, are now more than free to seek out newway ways to fund raise. If push comes to shove, hold a bake sale. …

The Joint Committee on Finance has now given students the same freedom they gave public employees in 2011. They have the option to join whatever group they’d like, and the dues will be voluntarily submitted, not taken.

It is a concept so simple even a zombie could understand.