The Student Government Association announced recently that they were proposing changes to their funds-allocation process. To ensure student organizations were aware of certain changes, a presentation was held on Monday, Feb. 22 during free hour where Daniel Wang, the chair of their Finance Board and financial economics major, discussed these new implementations that will affect fund distributions starting in the fall of 2019.

“The overall goal of the Finance Board is to distribute $275,000 to all of the student organizations on campus,” said Wang. In terms of the recent changes they are planning on pursuing, he noted, “We’re focusing on shifting planning budgets earlier; instead of coming to us a month before a scheduled event, organizations will submit a budget for the upcoming semester.”

Wang says that the Finance Board going over budgets through this process will ensure the money is properly allocated. It also allows student groups to spend their funds however they see fit, which means the Association will not put as much input into what organizations are placing their funds towards. Wang emphasized this Monday by explaining that the board will allow for groups to spend their funds however they wish so long as they meet university and SGA policies.

The leader of the Finance Board explained that in the past, information was passed down between members, which allowed for interpretations of policies to become muddied over time. An example of such is a university policy stating that non-exhaustible items cannot be purchased, because each purchase will need to be stored, which the SGA does not have room for. “The Finance Board used to let this policy slide, but now we can’t continue to let it go anymore.”

A crucial step Wang wants to take is to ensure that no student organizations get more money than they need to the point where other campus organizations are deprived. “Ten year ago, there was something called the House of Organizations, which did what the Finance Board does today – allocate money. However, student organizations would stack the Finance Committee of the house of Organizations.”

While the Board normally decides upon important decisions occasionally, from past experience of student organizations trying to lobby the Committee, the chair explains the Finance Board will implement “norms into the budgetary statues.” This ensures that paper trail follows organization’s spending while allowing for “legislation to pass for changes to occur.”

While that form of allocating money has since ceased, Wang notices some of those parallels today. In order to nip this in the bud, he is planning on setting forth a requirement that prevents the chair of the Finance Board from sitting on any Executive Boards within SGA.

At the financial presentation, Wang also discussed that 65% of funds will be guaranteed for on-campus activities while up to 25% will be directed towards off-campus events. The rest of the funding will go towards a Secondary Allocation System, which is currently planned to be used for emergencies and will then be considered for those of newer organization status and those with unforeseen funding issues.

Important dates discussed during the free-hour meeting include May 15, 2019, the deadline for groups turning in their Budget Request Packet for fall 2019. Meanwhile, July 1, 2019 is when student organizations can have access to their allocated funds.

In general, seven weeks after the commencing of a semester, deadlines are to be turned in for considering of spring 2020 funds; 30 days after the new semester, the Finance Board will get back in contact with organizations about their planned budget.

Wang stated he is planning for organizations to also have a liaison within the Finance Board in order to ensure that the groups are keeping in line with policies. “We’re looking to implement a liaison program, so every group would receive a Finance Board contact fund.” He also encourages people to apply to the Finance Board to help ensure that process, such as reforming the budgeting process, can run more smoothly.

There is a disturbing tendency emerging around instances of public acts of racism. Essentially, an act of racism will be captured, shared and condemned immediately, only to then be redacted and obscured as more “context” emerges around the act. News media will go to significant lengths to share this additional “context” until the matter is obscured entirely by useless side facts and tangents.

The most notable instance of this so far is perhaps the incident that occurred when a group of students harassed a group of Native Americans after the March for Life in Washington D.C. However, the first time I noticed it was a few weeks prior to that when two students made and presented a “KKK jingle” for a class project in my hometown of Dover, New Hampshire.

This incident initially sparked outrage, leading to the students being suspended and the teacher being put on paid leave. Almost immediately following that, however, the local paper was flooded with letters and comments insisting that the incident was taken out of context. This outcry eventually led to the students returning to class and the teacher being reinstated with no real consequences.

So what exactly is this context that changed the perception of these two seemingly clear-cut instances of racism? In both cases little more than unrelated facts that muddy the waters and appeals to the “character” of the individuals committing the racist acts.

Take for example the sudden shift of focus in the D.C. incident to the presence of a group of Black Hebrew Israelites who had clashed with the students earlier in the day. What did that have to do with anything the students did in response to the Native American activists? Nothing at all, really. Yet the media painted that earlier conflict as an essential part of the later conflict, associating the group of Native Americans with the Black Hebrew Israelites despite the two groups having nothing to do with each other.

In the case of the Dover incident much was made about the individual who had originally filmed and shared the KKK jingle. Many claimed that the student had a history of seeking attention or poor behavior. Many brought up that the student had disobeyed a request by the teacher to not film the presentations. Yet this does not at all address the root of the issue, it instead creates the idea that exposing racism is somehow as bad as committing acts of racism.

The second common thread in these incidents is the attempts to try and show instances of the perpetrators of these racist acts not being “racist people.” In the Dover case, many tried to focus on how the song was intended to go over the history of the KKK during Reconstruction after the Civil War, and that many of the verses in isolation are not racist at all.

Yet this ignores the fact that the chorus of the song is clearly quite racist, going “KKK, KKK, let’s kill all the blacks.” The educational intention of the song or project does not excuse the racism present in the execution of the project, even if attention is drawn to those parts after the fact.

A similar argument was made about the students in D.C., claiming that the incident was not as racist as it once appeared. In particular, one student was filmed staring down a Native American activist. In full context it seems he had not gone up to the man but was instead approached and refused to move.

That does not address much of anything at all. Refusing to get out of the way of someone is clearly rude. Given the further context of students whooping, chanting, “tomahawk chopping” and generally mocking Native Americans, a racist motivation can certainly be implied from that rudeness.

Overall it seems that a narrative is being pushed that seems to indicate that no one is really racist unless they are cartoonishly evil and single-mindedly so. Showing that the people who commit acts of racism are normal people who are not constantly striving to be as racist as possible says less about their acts of racism and more about a prevalent social discomfort with the idea that racism is perpetuated by otherwise normal people.

That discomfort is at the root of this obsession with context. The real intention of “adding context” to either of these stories was to resolve that discomfort. If it was not, then certainly we would have heard more about the connections between the far-right agenda of the March for Life and the history of racism from the students that attended it. We similarly would have seen how the teacher who assigned the KKK jingle project had a history of insensitivity and complaints from marginalized students.

The uncomfortable reality of these racist acts is that normal people can be and often are racist and furthermore, that racism is not always a stereotypical cross-burning hatred, but could instead be rooted in anything from a cold condescension to simple ignorance.

That should not be normalized or defended. Rather it should be confronted head-on, as we deal with racism as it does exist, not as we would like it to exist. The reality of racism in America is and likely always will be messy, thus requiring an honest attempt to identify and solve the underlying threads of oppression. Dishonest smoke screens of supposed context might make some people more comfortable but will do nothing to solve anything.

Medical marijuana has been a hot-button issue in the United States for decades, particularly since it was first legalized in California in 1996 (California Legislative Information). Since then, 28 other states have passed laws legalizing medical marijuana, including Maryland. But there is still controversy surrounding medical cannabis — a controversy that is evident right here at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, particularly for UMBC graduate school student and medical marijuana user Lauren Hall. 

Hall, who is pursuing her teaching certificate and her master’s in arts in teaching, was diagnosed with depression as a teenager; she began seeing a therapist and psychiatrist and was prescribed a cocktail of medications. Though they were effective, they came with severe long-term physical effects that Hall was not fond of, so she decided to pursue other treatments.

The alternative medication that Hall eventually decided to try was medical marijuana. Specifically, Hall uses the indica strain, which has what Hall calls a “body high” that helps her to relax and calm down. Unlike pharmaceutical antidepressants, Hall does not need to use marijuana on a consistent, regular basis — she simply smokes whenever she feels she needs to. Hall affirms that this has greatly helped to improve her mental health and that she now only has to take one additional antidepressant. However, this fix did not come easily: in order to use medical marijuana, Hall had to undergo an approximately three-week process filled with doctor’s appointments, applications, paperwork and other hoops to jump through.

The process began with Hall meeting with a doctor who is certified to allow people to obtain medical marijuana. She had to bring her existing prescriptions for her antidepressants to prove her diagnosis and then was required to fill out an application with the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission, or MMCC. In fact, the Commission initially sent her application back because the picture she submitted was not as clear as they required, but she re-submitted her form and received approval. Next, she returned to her doctor to pick up papers that legalized her to go to dispensaries to obtain and legally possess marijuana. Since then, she has been using medical marijuana for about a year.

This process was entirely worth it for Hall, who states, “I’m just doing really well on medical marijuana,” and that it has had a profoundly positive effect on her health. However, she does attribute its success partially to her therapist; she explains that, like any medication prescribed for mental health reasons, it is best to couple the medication with talk therapy. Additionally, her therapist is very supportive of her and her usage of medical marijuana.

Unfortunately, this support is not universal; Hall frequently encounters people who do not understand the benefits of medical marijuana or believe negative stereotypes about medical marijuana users. In fact, she has yet to find a psychiatrist that approves of or understands why she uses marijuana to treat her depression, rather than pharmaceuticals. Furthermore, she has found that the stigma against medical marijuana remains prominent and that people tend to perceive medical marijuana users as slackers or lazy potheads.

But Hall does not at all fit those stereotypes: “I’m a single mom of two kids, I graduated with honors, I work for the university … I’m making it work,” she says.

The obstacles faced by Hall and other medical marijuana users extend beyond facing other people’s preconceived notions. For example, there is one very important place that Hall cannot smoke or even possess any cannabis: right here at UMBC. 

Despite the fact that medical marijuana is legal in Maryland, UMBC is a federally-funded school, and under the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act Amendments of 1989, every school that wishes to receive federal funding must take a strict stance against illegal drugs — which cannabis still is, according to federal law. Therefore, the “possession, use or distribution of prescribed medical marijuana in university housing, on university property and at UMBC-sponsored off-campus events violates Rule 4 of the UMBC Code of Student Conduct and violates drug and alcohol-free workplace policies,” according to the official UMBC Student Conduct and Community Standards.

Hall considers this law “outdated and unacceptable.” Though she understands the necessity of receiving funding, she calls on the university to re-evaluate its stance on medical marijuana, saying that “sticking to a policy from the War on Drugs era and not considering new scientific research is ignorant.”  

Hall is certainly correct in saying that this law is outdated: the specific amendment that forces the university to take such a strong stance on drugs was passed in 1989, seven years before medical marijuana was first legalized by any state in the U.S. Regardless, the law prohibits Hall from being able to possess medical marijuana when she is on campus. Since Hall does not and never has lived on campus, this is not a major problem for her specifically. But any residential student who needs medical marijuana would be in a very difficult position.

According to Deputy Police Chief Major Bruce Perry, UMBC campus police occasionally search the Park Road smoke shelter for weed, but have only discovered marijuana once; more frequently, they get called to residence halls to investigate when the strong odor of marijuana is reported. This, Perry says, occurs approximately once every two or three weeks. If the student agrees to let them search their room, they will; if they find marijuana (which happens about 25 percent of the time), the student will be written up and will await a sanction. According to Dr. Jeff Cullen, Director of Student Conduct and Community Services, the typical punishment for a student caught smoking or in possession of marijuana would be “12 months of [d]isciplinary [p]robation, a status called ‘housing termination held in abeyance,’ a drug assessment and a reflection paper.”

As of now, UMBC police have never found anyone in possession of marijuana that was being used for medicinal purposes. But even if a student was caught with medical marijuana, they would likely be subject to the same school policies and punishments that a student who was illegally using the drug would be. Cullen does say that sanctions given to students are awarded with consideration to “mitigating or exacerbating factors,” but it is unlikely that medical marijuana usage would be applicable under those terms, because if UMBC were suspected of having a “permissive” attitude towards an illegal controlled substance, they would be at risk for losing federal funding. 

It is for reasons like these that so many groups advocate for the full legalization of marijuana. “There are still people in jail cells right now for marijuana possession,” says Hall, noting that those people are disproportionately people of color. In fact, Hall feels that the movement for legalization has become “very whitewashed,” noting that “throughout history, marijuana users and sellers were predominantly people of color, and that is where a lot of this stigma is coming from: a deliberate and systematic attempt to suppress those people through criminalization of marijuana.”

Hall spoke about this issue recently in a Creative Labs informational panel about race, marijuana and the criminal justice system. This panel is one of many local events that aim to educate the public about medical marijuana, because, as Hall has found, “there are a lot of misconceptions … people aren’t very informed” about medical cannabis, which she feels can add to the negative stigma surrounding it. For this reason, many dispensaries (such as local dispensaries PureLife Wellness and Trilogy Wellness) hold informational sessions and classes to help people gain an understanding of medical marijuana; additionally, there are resources such as “Maryjane of Maryland” that seek to inform patients about medical marijuana. 

Hall herself even advocates for acceptance of medical marijuana users; though she confessed that she was initially hesitant to speak so openly about her usage of medical marijuana, she knew that coming forward was a necessary step in helping people to understand medical marijuana. Above all, Hall states, “I really want it to be de-stigmatized … I believe in people coming forward and saying ‘Hey, I’m a functional person and I’m highly intelligent and I use marijuana on a regular basis and I’m being a successful person in society.’”

Moving forward, OFAS will begin to develop new DocuSign projects, including forms for their Work Study program. By continuing to pursue efficient solutions, OFAS is helping UMBC advance as a modern university.

More Info:

• Visit the DocuSign myUMBC Group

• Visit UMBC's FAQ knowledge base

 

This is a work of satire.

Bursting onto the scene with as much gusto as his aging 77 year-old body could muster, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders declared that the time to “complete the revolution” is at hand. Though he was bested by Clinton and Democratic National Convention’s possible monkey business the last election, Bernie Sanders refuses to just, as his opponents wish, lay down and die.

His platform focuses on three of his most important issues. With his presidency, he hopes to bring free education, increase the minimum wage, and fight off his impending old age. Stating his primary motivation for running as, “a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s,” Senator Sanders hopes to keep his mind healthy and young through the mental gymnastics associated with being the president of the United States.

“At first,” Senator Sanders said, “I wanted to help this world.” With the insanity of the previous general election, however, he quickly realized he needed to change gears and, “stop having a conscience.” From there, the pieces fell into place, and he realized he needed to prioritize, above all else, “[his] own well-being.”

Nonetheless, Sanders is still putting up a nice illusion of passion, an emotion long understood to be incomprehensible by anyone above the age of 30. One of the most salient features of his presidential run, as pertinent to UMBC students, is Sanders’ policy on college tuition. “By ensuring free tuition for everyone,” Sanders explained, “I’ll have to keep my mind active to think of an insane enough way to generate that kind of money.”

Should this come into effect, it would have no bearing on any current students. This is a great relief to all because there will be no feelings of disappointment when these plans inevitably never happen because of a lack of funding, a veto in Congress, or — in the most likely situation — both.

After interviewing a wide array of students on campus, the general opinions boiled down to three main opinions. Some people were totally apathetic, holding the belief that their voice into how their country functions had no weight. Others were extremely hopeful, holding onto the delusion that somehow their college tuition would be waived. The majority opinion, however, was simply excited for the return of what is commonly known as Bernie Math. “Let’s see what kind of crazy numbers will be generated to justify that wily old man’s victory,” one student said. “Silly Bernie.”

Despite accumulating over six million dollars very shortly after his announcement to run, Senator Sanders still has his doubt about his chances. “In all likelihood,” he said, “my body will probably shut down while I’m in office. And not shut down in the government sense of the word.” He shrugged and gave a smile that only comes after many years of being a great grandfather. “Though I must say, a little youthful optimism never hurt anyone.”

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