Confusion during Wednesday’s De Anza Associated Student Body Senate meeting may have extinguished any hope for two student assistants in the counseling center.
“I hire students to help students,” said Howard Irvin, Dean of the Counseling and Matriculation division. “If there is no funding for the counseling center, we’ll be down to zero student assistants.”
The leading voice in the opposition to the counseling center funding was Senator Sam Karimzadeh.
“When I was just a regular college student, I had a bad experience with the student assistants,” said Karimzadeh. “If we give you money, there is no system of accountability.”
Karimzadeh suggested the counseling center be completely automated and proposed two signs to be put up at the counseling center: one to let students know about the DASB card and the other directing them to the dean’s office.
Though terminals have already been set up in the counseling center, Zahra Noor said the automation system would not work be because some information cannot be processed through a machine.
“There are a lot of students asking ‘Where’s this’ and ‘Where’s that’ and the lines are always packed on Mondays,” said Zahra Noor, one of the two student assistants.
“Because it’s only the two of us, people come in and tell us ‘You don’t know anything’ or ‘Are you going to help me or what?’ all the time.”
After the first vote, there was still overwhelming confusion and questions whether the counseling center would receive the funding. Irvin and Noor eventually withdrew their request after enduring a half hour of indecisiveness on part of the senate. “The stipulations are ridiculous,” said Irvin. “The kinds of questions they were asking didn’t come up the first or other times we’ve asked for funding.”
“He [Karimzadeh] argued against the funding because of a personal experience he had with the counseling center,” said Noor, the former senate VP of marketing. “That was completely unprofessional.”
Senate President Tony Suen immediately left council chambers and apologized to Irvin. Suen said the funding request is technically dead, but he will renegotiate with Irvin because the request process didn’t work.
“I should’ve stopped the discussion before it got that bad,” said Suen. “People need to read their agendas before they come to the meeting.”
The counseling center used to have three rotating student assistants and are now down to two due to lack of funds. The student assistants rotate between two shifts of 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. The 3-hour gap is a toss up for anybody working in the counseling center during that time.
