The Pit staff ARE NOT going to be letting us in the back door any more regardless of what motions we pass at council. We might as well have saved face and voted to remove our self-given privilege.

As for pats on the back and rewarding our selves: I like being a councillor, I like going to AMS meetings more than I like going to the pit. If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t have ran.

Also, only a few people go to the pit, most of us are too exhausted and go home afterwards, or to the gallery.

I also want to mention that there were quite a few of us who voted to revoke this “privilege”. Please don’t let this alter your view of all councilors.
-Rory

And Diddly, yes, I think there is a big exposure problem, but how do you solve that without making Council seem overly self-promoting? :(

I am not anti-perk. For everyone’s information, council also decided last night to get AMS council zip-up hoodies (of which the AMS is subsidizing 50%). I am totally fine with that and also am fully in favour of serving dinner at meetings. Gossip Guy, I might even be in favour of allowing councilors a free beer at the Pit after meetings (god knows free beer is the only way to make it through a GSS meeting.)

Peter, you’ve almost got it correct when you said “Its not that there’s a perk. Its that the AMS Council gave itself a perk.” However, I’d take it one step further.

The BOC was trying to make things more fair for everyone at the Pit. New policy: no one goes in the back door. Council’s response: “OK, but it shouldn’t apply to us.” They kept their own perk in the context of a change designed to make things more fair.

I will agree with you on the lacking of the socket analogy, and maybe I can provide an explanation. I see what you mean by the ‘providing electricity’ bit, and perhaps why I didn’t think of that way is because I admittedly suffer from a certain blindness that many students do. For those people not involved with the AMS, you must admit that many people just don’t see the good (or, well, the anything) that the councilors do. Is it an exposure problem? Is it the squeaky wheel problem, where we (those of us who are less aware) see only the protestors and the bonfires and the rage? Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the subject of another article.

CAPTCHA: coppickl (cop pickle?)

What if you stuck a knife in a wallsocket to save someone else from doing it? Or if doing it gave everyone electricity?

And I think many people would agree with you on the “We run this join, let me in!” I guess they don’t want to be that posessive.

*internal pause…did that last paragraph just make sense?* Anyway, it was meant to agree.

If it’s that perspective, that of a club owner using his / her own facility, that’s cool. What I object to is the “We deserve this because we subject ourselves to hardship” attitude.

I’m sorry, but I don’t consider myself selfish for objecting to this. If someone voluntarily does something that causes them pain (say, I don’t know, sticking a knife in a wallsocket), knowing full well that it will cause them distress, I’m not going to be brimming with sympathy.

I don’t object to complaining (at least I don’t think I said that; I did say I objected to using the complaints as an excuse), but forgive me if I don’t see self-inflicted hardship as a good reason to grant oneself a benefit.

You pointed out the root of what bugs people in this case. Its not that there’s a perk. Its that the AMS Council gave itself a perk. Its like politicians/managers/bosses/etc voting to raise their salaries. They never do tha-… oh oops.

You see, the problem rests in that the AMS Council does not have a boss/coordinator/team-leader that can give them a perk or a pat on the back for a job well done. They have to do that themselves. Sadly, that has the appearance of looking sneaky and overly self-serving. Consequently, they open themselves up to exactly this sort of attack and accusation.

C’est la vie.

They may complain that it’s a crap job and they may want to benefit from the very services they work to provide…but the fact of the matter is that, had the perk been taken away from them, they would still be working their butts off to protect *your* right to that service. With or without their sparse perks, they would still do what they were elected to do, which they volunteered to do because they believed they could do it best, so that you, their students, would be able to benefit from their efforts.

They don’t do it for the perks (most of them, I would hope), but they are nice. This is one that, as Maayan says, is fairly harmless. We’re not talking about a $200 000 a year compensation, here.

So then, with or without the perks, let them complain. For the work they do, they deserve that much.

What I do care about is people voluntarily taking on a job, and then saying, “We deserve such and such, because this job is so time-consuming / often boring / a JOB!” It’s a crap job, I get it. Your meetings are long, okay.

If it sucks so much that you think you deserve to skip the line, ahead of others who are lining up, then maybe you ought to not do it.