Matt Mitgang | Student Life

Students celebrate the passage of Proposition A in the DUC.

St. Louis County voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition A, a sales tax measure for Metro, with substantial student support on Tuesday, sending supporters gathered at Washington University into celebration and paving the way for the expansion of transit service in the St. Louis region.

“It’s a blowout,” said Rose Windmiller, the director of state relations and local government affairs at Washington University and a Prop A supporter, after students started a chant of “Metro! Metro! Metro!” in the background. “It feels tremendous.”

The final vote was 62.9 percent “yes” to 37.1 percent “no.” With 84.8 percent of the vote counted by 10 p.m., the “yes” vote was 62.2 percent and the “no” vote was 37.8 percent, meaning a margin that supporters and opponents acknowledged was insurmountable with just 15 percent of precincts having not reported.

More than 100 supporters who were gathered in the Danforth University Center’s Tisch Commons for an election watch party embraced and broke out into cheering as Chancellor Mark Wrighton, Chesterfield Mayor John Nations and Citizens for Modern Transit Executive Director Tom Shrout took the podium just after 10 p.m. The three hailed the proposition’s passage as a victory for the St. Louis region’s residents, students and businesses and not for candidates or parties.

“We win,” Wrighton said to thunderous applause. “St. Louis has made an investment in its future. We will all be rewarded.”

Prop A will raise the St. Louis County sales tax by 0.5 percent and trigger a 0.25 percent tax in the city, raising nearly $80 million a year for future light-rail expansion and for restoring the service that Metro cut on March 30, 2009.

The outcome represented a hard-fought, long-sought victory for supporters, after similar tax proposals failed in 1997 and 2008. And students and administrators, who were elated and exhausted after several days of mobilization efforts, said the measure’s passage means students, faculty and workers at the University will be better connected to the region.

“This is an opportunity for Wash. U. to continue its strong connections to the community, to really connect with St. Louis and to grow as an institution,” said Liz Kramer, an administrative fellow who spearheaded the student-led pro-Prop A campaign.

A small group of opponents gathered at Caldwell’s on the Plaza in Frontenac. St. Louis Tea Party leader Gina Loudon, the wife of former state Sen. John Loudon, R-Chesterfield, said opponents “were tremendously disappointed, but I’m not altogether surprised.” She added that the opposition had already started discussing how to make sure that Metro was accountable to the public, amid their concerns that Metro did not have a concrete plan for the tax money.

Metro CEO Bob Baer pledged accountability, saying the victory was a vote of confidence by the public. “We promise and pledge public accountability, transparency and the provision of the best service we can possibly provide,” Baer said.

With the future of public transit and sales taxes in the region on the line, both supporters and opponents were nervous and optimistic while they waited for results. But as precincts started reporting and the “yes” vote far exceeded the “no” vote, supporters grew more optimistic and opponents realized they faced overwhelming odds.

Tuesday’s turnout was 22 percent, two percentage points higher than what county officials predicted. Kramer said Tuesday afternoon that the Westgate polling place was empty, but other student volunteers reported a steady stream of student voters at polling places on and near campus.

Turnout in other parts of St. Louis County was described as light, especially in West and South counties. In a early positive sign for Prop A supporters, turnout in South County, whose voters likely lean toward “no,” was described as very light by multiple campaign leaders on both sides. But supporters said they needed substantial turnout in North County and Mid County and at Washington University and other schools to have a good chance of passage.

Students and administrators leading pro-Prop A efforts worked feverishly Tuesday to turn out as many students as possible before polls closed at 7 p.m. Meanwhile, the cash-starved local opposition called and e-mailed supporters and tried to gain as much media exposure as possible.

Campus transit advocates’ efforts and the administration’s efforts made up one facet of the broader push by regional Prop A supporters. The Advance St. Louis campaign, though not officially affiliated with the student-run efforts, spent close to $1 million, thanks in part to $75,000 in contributions from the University. Local organizations conducted their own turnout efforts as well.

Jonathon Burns, 26, of Shrewsbury, Mo., has established himself as a rising star in the Tea Party movement while stoking the ire of a large number of liberal students, officials and transit advocates here with his outspoken opposition to interventionist government and tax increases.

Courtesy of John Burns

John Burns pictured at the gulag demonstration on campus last November.

Burns was one of several people who protested socialism with a mock gulag display on campus in November 2009. Burns, who was virtually unknown a year ago, has quickly become perhaps the most recognizable opponent of Proposition A—a proposed half-cent sales tax increase for Metro that has been popular among students. He is the spokesman of the opposition group Citizens for Better Transit.

In a flurry of newspaper submissions, blog posts and appearances at local Tea Party events, Burns cast Proposition A as an attempt to funnel money from the middle class to powerful political and business interests.

“I think Proposition A is an example of the hijacking of democracy,” Burns said in an interview with Student Life.

Burns also acknowledged his role in the gulag display, which the University chapter of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) built one afternoon in November to warn people of what Burns said are the dangers of socialism and increased government control of the economy.

His views on Prop A and socialism have found relatively little support at the University. Rather, they have ruffled the feathers of community members and Proposition A supporters here, who have accused Burns of fear-mongering and distorting the facts.

But Burns and some members of the Tea Party movement deny that. If anything, they argue, Burns has been an inspiring champion of smaller government and lower taxes. “John is just a really courageous voice in that,” said Gina Loudon, a St. Louis Tea Party leader. “I would have never expected so much courage from someone that young.”

Burns has focused much of his criticism of Proposition A on the University’s U-Pass program, which allows full-time students and benefits-eligible faculty and staff to ride Metro for free. Burns has claimed that the $2.3 million the University pays Metro for the program is 80 percent less than what the school should be paying; while the University pays only $100 per U-Pass for 25,000 of them, passes for the disabled cost much more, he argues.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton and Metro officials said Burns’ allegation is baseless, as any school or business can sign up with Metro to receive discounts for bulk purchases of passes.

And Metro spokesman Charlie Bosworth and spokeswoman Dianne Williams explained that Metro calculates ridership based on the number of boardings, not the number of people with passes. Government-audited ridership figures from fiscal 2009 show that U-Pass users accounted for about 4.13 percent of Metro’s ridership, while the University’s payment equaled about 4.65 percent of Metro’s passenger revenue in fiscal 2009.

“They’re actually paying a little bit more than the average rider,” Bosworth said.

Wrighton also noted that while the University buys passes for all eligible community members, “only 75 percent actually request a U-Pass.”

The University did not comment on Burns himself. But one administration official said that the administration seeks to promote the proposition instead of fighting back against Burns. Officials’ private reactions have ranged from befuddlement that Burns is targeting Washington University to exasperation with his media attention and his criticisms of the U-Pass program.

“My personal frustration is that we have to waste time arguing with him about something like our U-Pass program, which really has nothing to do with the issue at hand,” said the official, who wished to remain anonymous for professional reasons.

Still, Loudon said this isn’t about Washington University. “This is about something that has been portrayed one way that is entirely another way,” she said.

Burns’ criticisms of Metro and the U-Pass reflect his broader concerns with government power. He believes in the power of ordinary people to serve as citizen journalists, exposing fraud and wrongdoing in the government by going undercover.

“As a journalist, that’s a very noble cause,” Burns said.

Sensing that they face an uphill battle, Washington University students and administrators have joined forces with local transit advocates. Together, they have poured thousands of dollars, several volunteers and hours of time into mobilization efforts in the final days before the election, whose outcome carries major implications for Metro, the region’s transit system.

“We’re not going to stop until the polls close at 7 p.m.,” said Liz Kramer, an administrative fellow who has spearheaded efforts to support Proposition A.

Students voted in overwhelming favor of November 2008’s unsuccessful Proposition M, and it has become clear that supporters of this year’s measure are banking their hopes in part on youth turnout. But turnout decreases sharply in off-year, non-November elections, especially among younger voters, and members of both sides acknowledge that every voter will count.

“I really want to encourage people not to take this for granted,” Chancellor Mark Wrighton said. “This is of vital importance to our community, and turning out to vote is critical.”

But Wrighton has been mindful of the turnout problem. “This is an April election,” he said. “There’s no political candidate with high visibility on the ballot.”

Proposition A would increase the St. Louis County sales tax by 0.5 percent and trigger a previously passed 0.25 percent tax increase in the city of St. Louis. Supporters say it would raise about $80 million per year to restore transit service that Metro cut on March 30, 2009, and support future light-rail expansion. If the measure fails, Metro says it would need to cut service to well below March 30, 2009, levels.

Opponents argue the tax would disproportionately harm lower-income families while benefiting a small number of people, and give hundreds of millions of tax dollars to an agency that has misspent public money.

“If 100 families benefit and 500 families can’t make their house payment next time, have we really done anything beneficial for the region?” said Gina Loudon, a leader of the St. Louis Tea Party.

The administration and student groups have devoted significantly more resources to Prop A efforts than they did to Prop M, which failed by three percentage points despite overwhelming student support. The University has donated $75,000 to the pro-Prop A campaign, versus $25,000 to the Prop M campaign, according to Rob Wild, the assistant to the chancellor.

Though the chancellor wrote e-mails to the school community in both campaigns, this time he has taken a highly visible role in St. Louis County. Wrighton has e-mailed thousands of alumni who live in St. Louis County to encourage them to vote for the measure, and has chaired the Advance St. Louis steering committee and spoken to the media.

The Faculty Senate Executive Committee has endorsed Proposition A, and its leadership sent an e-mail to Senate members encouraging them to vote “yes.”

In his March 22 e-mail to the school community, Wrighton urged students and faculty to turn out and vote in favor of the proposition. “Passage of Proposition A is critical to the overall vitality of the St. Louis area,” he wrote. Wrighton also appeared in a recent Citizens for Modern Transit commercial in which he says transit “carries 25,000 of my university students, faculty and staff.”

(Illustration by Brittany Meyer | Student Life)

The committee of faculty and students tasked with finding a candidate to fill the new post has scheduled two interviews for next month, despite already recommending a candidate based on three interviews earlier in the semester.

Members of the hiring committee submitted a letter to Alan Glass, the director of Student Health Services and the official directly responsible for the new position, last month after bringing three candidates to campus.

Glass would not comment on specific details of the hiring process, including why no one was hired or whether the candidates who previously visited campus remained in consideration in the ongoing search. However, he underscored the importance of finding a candidate capable of meeting the needs of stakeholders throughout the University.

“I’m very committed to finding as close to perfect a fit for this critical position,” Glass said. “Until we can find a person who at least comes close to that—in all of our opinions—my intention is to leave the search open.”

Members of the hiring committee—who were selected from the chancellor-appointed Advisory Committee on Sexual Violence and Prevention (ACSVP)—referred all questions about the process and the candidates to Glass.

Although losses in the University’s endowment have forced cost-cutting measures in many departments, school officials, including Chancellor Mark
Wrighton and Vice Chancellor for Students James McLeod, have consistently expressed a commitment to the position, and by all accounts financial concerns will not impact the position in the near future.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into the development and financing of this position,” Glass said. “I’m dedicated to it moving forward, so it’s not going to dry up because money is not as free as it was a few years ago.”

Facilitating collaboration

Formally, the position will be known as the assistant director for sexual assault and community health services. When a candidate is hired, he or she will join the staff of the Habif Health and Wellness Center and will report directly to Glass.

The new position will be responsible for coordinating the University’s sexual assault prevention, education and survivor support efforts and will offer guidance to the student groups that currently deal with this issue on campus.

Because there are three different student organizations dealing with issues of sexual violence, each with a slightly different focus, there is a need for a centralized guiding presence, said senior Christopher Chesley, the co-president of Men Organized for Rape Education (MORE).

The new office will help groups “have a more effective and powerful foothold on campus” and will raise the profile of sexual assault on campus, Chesley said.

Leaders of each of the student groups involved with this issue stressed that having an institutional presence focused solely on the problem of sexual violence would open the door to more resources, greater visibility and increased stability as student leaders transition in and out of leadership positions.

“We love the work that we do, but we are limited by our resources,” said junior Maria Santos, president of the Committee Organized for Rape Education (CORE). Although the movement of students is divided into several smaller groups, Santos stressed that a University-wide staff position would help bring attention to the fact that “we are a larger group and a larger constituency that is interested in fighting sexual assault on campus.”

A long history

The first conversations about the position in the 1980s grew out of a recognition that despite a strong commitment to sexual assault prevention and education among students, faculty and staff, the University’s resources lacked the visible presence to make them easily accessible.

Initially, the University’s support network was pieced together gradually through the commitment of members of the University community.

According to Karen Levin Coburn, a now-retired staff member who served as the University’s women’s crisis counselor and the chair of the Committee on Sexual Assault (COSA) for many years, survivors of sexual violence and those in need of support were often referred to her informally by faculty members and RAs.

“There was a lot of collaboration going on on campus, but it was still not organized in any way,” Coburn said.

Over the years, efforts to prevent sexual and relationship violence grew because of initiatives led by students, faculty and staff, and many of those have remained until today. In addition to the three student groups that focus on survivor support and education, “The Date,” a required presentation during freshman orientation, began because of student lobbying and is still a student-run event.

COSA, which was replaced last year by ACSVP, submitted a yearly recommendation to then-Chancellor William Danforth highlighting the need for a staff position focused on coordinating all of the efforts under way on campus.

“Generally, my thought was that rather than have lots of specialists, that they were problems and issues for the whole campus,” Danforth said. “We were a smaller institution then, and I didn’t think it made sense to try and solve every problem with a new person in charge of something.”

The most recent push to fill the position began in 2007 in response to the violent rape of a female student in Myers Hall by a man unaffiliated with the University. That year, Student Union Senate passed two resolutions in favor of the position and students began to lobby the administration in earnest.

Those efforts sparked the University to re-recognize the importance of facing the problem posed by sexual assault, and led to a year-and-a-half-long process of writing a position statement and the ongoing interview process.

Shifting focus

During the long development of the position, its scope has shifted substantially.

Currently, the job description emphasizes responding to sexual and relationship violence as a health problem.

According to Glass, the position defines sexual assault and the risk factors associated with it in terms of a broad sense of community health—both the physical and mental well-being of the victim, as well as the ways that alcohol and other mental health problems factor into the perpetration of sexual violence.

“Although universities place these positions in different areas administratively depending on what their culture is, the logic for defining it as health certainly works for our University,” Glass said.

Across the board, those involved with the sexual assault prevention and education movement on campus stressed that whatever the mandate of the position, it was important for it to help to shape the broader conversation on campus in a way that would draw attention to the problem and help facilitate solutions.

“It’s important to remember that having this position won’t solve everything—there’s still going to be sexual assault on campus,” said senior Bobby Harvey, president of the campus Sexual Assault and Rape Anonymous Helpline (SARAH). “What we can do is have more of a dialogue about it, and hopefully creating the position will help create a dialogue about it because there’s so much that people don’t know about the issues.”

Although the University took several cost saving measures over the summer, it continues to face an annual shortfall of about $30 million per year through the 2011 fiscal year and beyond.

The most significant source of trouble for the University’s finances is the continued decline of the endowment. As of June 30, 2009 the market value of the endowment, about $4.2 billion, is down by 30% from its peak value of two years ago.

“This downturn is very significant and has resulted in a decrease in endowment payout of $9 million,” Wrighton wrote. “We anticipate additional years of lowered payout, and are planning for another $9 million decrease in FY11.”

This is a breaking news update. Continue to check StudLife.com for more information.

Chancellor Mark Wrighton recently announced six new members to Washington University’s board of trustees. New board members Gregory Boyce, John Dains, Steven Leer, George Paz and Harry Seigle began their terms July 1. George P. Bauer began his term in December.

The new members were selected in a collaborative effort by both Wrighton and the board. The board of trustees’ main goal is to oversee the implementation of the mission of the University and to select and evaluate the chancellor. Much of what the board does relates to the endowment and how the interest from the endowment is spent each year.

“We try to pick people who have high integrity and commitment to the values we have for the community, which include an aspiration for innovation,” Wrighton said.

George P. Bauer
Affiliation: GPB Group Ltd.
Education: Bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from Washington University.
Bauer is chairman and CEO of GPB Group Ltd., an investment-banking firm based in New Canaan, Conn. Bauer has spent 31 years with IBM Corp., holding executive positions in marketing, finance, and business systems, including chief financial officer positions of several IBM divisions. He also held leadership positions in IBM’s European operations. After his retirement in 1987, he became executive professor of management information systems at Georgia State University.

Gregory H. Boyce
Affiliation: Peabody Energy
Education: Bachelor’s degree in mining engineering from the University of Arizona,  advanced management program degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business.
Boyce is chairman and CEO of St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company. Boyce was once CEO for Rio Tinto mining company in London as well as president and CEO of Kennecott Energy Co., which became the nation’s second-largest coal company during his tenure. In April 2009, Boyce was ranked 114th in the country for highest CEO salary by Forbes magazine.

George Paz
Affiliation: Express Scripts Inc.
Education: Bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Paz is chairman, president and chief executive officer of St. Louis-based Express Scripts Inc., one of the largest pharmacy benefits management companies in North America, with more than 50 million members. Paz joined Express Scripts in 1998 as senior vice president and chief financial officer. Previously, he was a partner at Coopers and Lybrand, managing the firm’s Midwest insurance practice, and was executive vice president and chief financial officer for Life Partners Group.

Harry Seigle
Affiliation: The Elgin Company
Education: Bachelor’s degree from Washington University, J.D. from Northwestern University.
Seigle is principal of The Elgin Co. in Elgin, Ill., a company involved in real-estate acquisition and management, private investing and philanthropy. Previously, he was chairman and president of Seigle’s Inc., an Elgin-based, family-owned building supply company that was sold to Stock Building Supply in 2005. He worked for Chapman and Cutler LLP in Chicago before joining his family’s business, then known as Elgin Lumber Co., founded in 1881.

Steven F. Leer
Affiliation: Arch Coal Inc.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of the Pacific, MBA from Washington University’s Olin Business School.
Leer is chairman and chief executive officer of Arch Coal, Inc. He was president and chief executive officer from the time the company was formed in 1997 to 2006. Prior to the launch of Arch Coal, he was president and chief executive officer of Arch Mineral Corp., one of Arch Coal’s predecessor companies. He also has held executive positions with the Valvoline Co., Ashland, Inc. and Ashland Coal, Inc. Leer is a member of The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council, a yearly conference that covers worldwide economic issues.

John F. Dains
Affiliation: Helm Financial Corp.
Education: Bachelor’s degree from the Olin Business School at Washington University.
Dains is chief executive officer of Helm Financial Corp., a leading railcar and locomotive operating leasing company based in San Francisco. Dains joined Helm Financial Corp. in 1987 as chief financial officer and was named president and chief operating officer in 2000. In 2005, he was named CEO. Before joining Helm Financial Corp., Dains worked at IC Industries in Chicago as vice president of finance for the Railroad Products Group of the Abex Corp. subsidiary. Dains made significant contributions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.