Student Association members are criticizing SA leaders’ transparency about the cost and planning of the upcoming “Cuse Can! It Starts With Us” event.

Three students — SA President Ghufran Salih, Vice President Kyle Rosenblum and Comptroller Ambrose Gonzalez — approved $242,000 for “Cuse Can!” Several SA cabinet members said they are frustrated because they were ignored or not consulted in the planning of the event. Cabinet members also said they disapprove of the event’s cost and content.

University Union is marketing the April 6 event as a “day-long celebration of community, diversity and activism.” It features a stand-up comedy show by Tiffany Haddish, a concert with Pusha T and Flipp Dinero and two panels. Salih and Rosenblum worked with UU and the National Pan-Hellenic Council to plan “Cuse Can!”

Quincy Nolan resigned at Monday’s Assembly meeting from their position as SA’s co-chair of diversity affairs, which is a cabinet position. Nolan said Pusha T has used homophobic slurs and that LGBTQ voices were ignored in the planning of the event.

In an interview on Wednesday, Nolan said Salih and Rosenblum told the SA cabinet months ago that they were planning an event focused on community engagement and diversity.

“I was saying there needs to be queer voices in the planning, especially from our Resource Center,” Nolan said. “Ghufran said that they were going to take special precautions to make sure that any artist they bring is queer-friendly.”

Both Salih and Rosenblum initially agreed to phone interviews with The Daily Orange on Wednesday, but then said they had prior engagements and would only respond via email.

In response to a question about SA members’ concerns about transparency, Salih said the number of people involved in the planning of “Cuse Can!” was on a “need-to-know basis.”

“When dealing with artist contracts, confidentiality is of paramount importance,” Salih and Rosenblum said. “These contracts are legally binding documents that could be jeopardized if information were to be released publicly prior to an official announcement.”

Student Affairs Committee co-chair and presidential candidate Ryan Golden said he understands UU wouldn’t want to jeopardize its relationship with a performer. But he added that Salih and Rosenblum should have made sure they weren’t the only SA members making decisions.

“They should have asked the co-chairs for community engagement and diversity affairs to sign those NDAs at the very beginning and bring them in on the conversation,” Golden said.

Iris Guzman, co-chair of SA’s Community Engagement Committee, wrote a Letter to the Editor to The Daily Orange last week criticizing SA for bringing celebrities to campus and not leaders.

“For the past two years, students have critiqued the chancellor, the administration and DPS for a lack of genuine commitment to community and social change,” Guzman wrote. “However, when SA had an opportunity to ignite a meaningful conversation about community dynamics and social change, it decided to throw our money away.”

Nolan said Rosenblum asked them and Diversity Affairs Co-chair Eden Afework to plan a panel for “Cuse Can!” They proposed a panel about why there are two “frat rows” and why both are primarily made up of white members. Fraternity rows exist on Comstock and Walnut avenues.

Nolan and Afework wanted to have an open dialogue about the lack of space for marginalized students on campus. Rosenblum didn’t like the idea, Nolan said. He called Nolan into his office and said he and Salih wanted to focus more generally on campus diversity, Nolan said.

Nolan pushed Rosenblum to stick with the fraternity row panel. Rosenblum agreed to keep the panel, but the planning committee changed the panel idea without consulting Nolan or Afework — who didn’t know until UU put out its press release announcing the event details on Sunday, Nolan said.

“Behind their back, this committee that was designing “Cuse Can!” changed the panel to be just a general discussion on diversity, which was a slap to people who put their time and effort into creating these platforms,” Golden said.

In response to a request to verify Nolan’s account, Salih and Rosenblum did not specifically mention Nolan or the meeting in Rosenblum’s office. Salih and Rosenblum said they chose to have a broader discussion about both issues on and off campus because it was more fitting for the event.

“We relayed these sentiments to our co-chairs of Diversity Affairs and as planning continued to progress, we started finalizing necessary details about these panels, including location, times, and panelists,” they said.

Multiple cabinet members said they knew almost nothing about “Cuse Can!” until UU announced the lineup Sunday. This meant that no one in SA except Salih and Rosenblum could have provided feedback on the content or lineup of the event, Nolan said.

Golden and Director of DPS Relations Kailee Vick released a statement last week condemning the “Cuse Can!” event. Golden and Vick are candidates for SA president and vice president, respectively.

“The process to which ‘Cuse Can!’ was designed and was brought together was not inclusive, and the fact that the event really steered away from its original intent and the event is now not inclusive to queer students,” Golden said in an interview Wednesday.

Mackenzie Mertikas, SA’s chief of staff and a presidential candidate, said in an email to The D.O. that all SA members could have been provided with more updates about the event planning, but communication can be “tricky” when contracts are involved.  She also said any use of a homophobic slur is unacceptable.

“It’s really unfortunate that something like this was able to slip between the cracks,” Mertikas said. “But at this point, I think it’s time to do what we can to ensure that this event is doing what it was originally intended to do; which is to empower different communities on campus and highlight different experiences.”

Pusha T is known to have previously used homophobic slurs.

The D.O. asked Salih and Rosenblum about SA members’ concerns regarding how connected the performers are to community engagement.

“Tiffany’s work centers around her life growing up in a foster care system and she has been a strong advocate for youth in the foster care system throughout her life,” Salih and Rosenblum said.

Salih and Rosenblum said Pusha T has advocated for prison reform and youth empowerment. On the #SchoolsNotPrison Tour, Pusha T urged California to spend more on youth public education instead of on prisons and incarceration, they said. Salih and Rosenblum did not mention Flipp Dinero, who will perform with Pusha T.

“While the concert does not have any dialogue attached to it, we wanted to bring an artist that had community awareness in the actions they made and is able to connect to a large following of students,” Salih and Rosenblum said.

Haddish and Pusha T will not take part in either of the event’s panels. The panelists have not been announced.

Half of the proceeds from “Cuse Can!” will be donated to the Hendricks Chapel Food Pantry, and the other half will go to the Hillside Work-Scholarship Connection, Salih and Rosenblum said. SA will also host a luggage drive for Hillside. Cabinet members said $20,000 will go to the pantry if all the tickets sell out.

Salih and Rosenblum funded the event through a special budgetary fund called rollover. Stacy Omosa, a member of SA’s Finance Board and candidate for comptroller, said the rollover account is made up of excess funds from the previous academic year that became available when registered student organizations cancelled their events — after which they must return the money to SA.

The current SA comptroller, Ambrose Gonzalez, did not respond to a request for comment.

Omosa said only the SA president, vice president and comptroller are required to approve the allocation of rollover funds. She said last year, SA used rollover to fund “Cuse for Good: Social Justice.” In February 2018, SA brought actress and activist Yara Shahidi and rapper Joey Bada$$ to campus for a panel on social justice that was followed with a concert by Bada$$.

Last year’s event cost about the same as “Cuse Can!” she said. But Omosa said Salih and Rosenblum didn’t do anything wrong because “that’s just how the rules are written.”

“The problem with rollover is that it doesn’t adhere to the finance rules whatsoever,” Omosa said.

For example, she said, the “Cuse Can!” event would violate the cost per student limit that all registered student organizations have to follow. The maximum cost per student is approximately $45, Omosa said. Nolan and Golden said rollover’s exemption from the finance code is unfair to student organizations that are required to follow the restrictions.

The standing and seating capacity of Goldstein Auditorium, where “Cuse Can!” will be held, is 1,500. The panels will be held in Watson Theater, which seats 232 people. With a cost of $242,000, “Cuse Can!” would cost a minimum of about $70 per student — assuming the tickets sell out.

“Finance Board wouldn’t approve that. No student organization would’ve gotten away with that,” Golden said. “That’s a big issue that we’re allowing ourselves to get away with these loopholes just because of the rollover.”

Omosa said at this point in the semester, SA doesn’t have any money left to give to student organizations. Several organizations have come to the Finance Board — which allocates anywhere between $3 to $4 million every year to RSOs — asking for more money, she said.

RSOs were told to ask Salih and Rosenblum, who could have given them funds from rollover, but they were denied funding, Omosa said.

The D.O. asked Salih and Rosenblum if they thought the relative freedom of rollover funding was fair to student organizations. Salih and Rosenblum said rollover spending allows SA to fund events or initiatives it otherwise couldn’t support.

“While there aren’t written guidelines or restrictions on how to spend the funds, it is expected that these officers, who are sworn in to act on behalf of the student body, will make justified spendings,” they said.

Published on March 28, 2019 at 12:59 am

Contact Casey: casey@dailyorange.com | @caseydarnell_