Talk:United States Student Association

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Higher education: Student Affairs

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Does it still exist?

Is the organization still functioning? I can find very little about its current affairs. Joyous! Noise! 17:25, 12 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I found a reference to it at https://convergencemag.com/articles/what-dsa-can-learn-from-organizational-death-in-the-student-movement/ from October 2023 and possibly 2017 to it being dead though that isn't a reliable source. Note more local orgs may still exist. Erp (talk) 23:34, 16 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I also note that the last year they apparently filed a 990 form (990, 990-EZ, 990-N) was 2018. Erp (talk) 05:28, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The 2023 article stating USSA collapsed in 2017 is inaccurate. There are many articles citing USSA’s existence after 2017. Based on my research, USSA has filed 990s as recently as 2022, possibly since then.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/03/student-activists-biggest-obstacle-often-rhythms-college-activism-itself

https://www.forbes.com/sites/civicnation/2018/03/22/tuition-costs-shouldnt-leave-students-sick-or-hungry-its-time-for-free-community-college/

https://truthout.org/articles/unaffordable-higher-education-leads-to-low-graduation-rates/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samside26 (talk • contribs) 08:45, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Tsavage courtesy tag, as you added the article AntiDionysius (talk) 09:04, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@AntiDionysius Thanks for letting me know.

It seems accurate that USSA stopped being operational around 2017, it just wasn't well-reported.

"In the US, especially, we saw the United States Student Association’s collapse a few years ago, which has greatly hindered student’s ability down there to make their voice heard and unite on a national level."[1]

"For example, the United States Student Association mostly collapsed in the 2010s after over 70 years of existence, leaving millions of students without united national representation — but this has largely gone unreported."[2]

"Major groups such as the United States Student Association (USSA) –– which represented over a million students when I was in college –– simply don’t exist anymore."[3]

There are annual 990s for years after that, but there also seem to be two different instances of United States Student Association, each with a different EIN: one shows filings until 2018,[4], the other until 2022.[5] InfluenceWatch has an entry for "United States Student Association Foundation" that says "USSAF funds the United States Student Association (USSA)"; and there's a USSA doing business as USSAF listing, with the same EIN as the USSA that has the recent tax filings.[6]

From all that, it would seem that the USSA working organization did collapse in or around 2017, and a related entity continued to receive some funding and kept filing, perhaps to keep the non-profit status open.

I edited the article to add an additional citation and mention the continued tax filings. The sources seem reliable for this situation. It could be covered more clearly, but that might approach OR... Tsavage (talk) 14:25, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Samside26 I looked at those three sources.

Oct 14, 2018 "Chris Gannon, vice president of the US Student Association (USSA) said...”[7]

Jan 02, 2019 "Chris Gannon, vice president for the United States Student Association, a national student organizing group..." [8]

Aug 1, 2019 Joseline Garcia: "I worked with community and national organizations such as the United States Student Association"[9]

In the first two instances, Chris Gannon is listed as the VP elect in the 2018 tax filing for the USSA that last filed in 2018. In the third instance, Garcia refers to her work at USSA in the past tense, while her credit at the end of that article refers to her as the president of the USSA. She is listed as a key employee with compensation in 2018 for the other USSA (dba USSA Foundation) that has continued to file.

All of that seems consistent with the stuff in my previous post. Multiple sources seem to indicate quite clearly that USSA hasn't been a operating since around 2017; Gannon and Garcia were at the winding down. The whole things seems largely unreported, perhaps as the result of a messy, unclear ending.

Hopefully, the article reflects that it ended neutrally and without going into OR. Tsavage (talk) 14:57, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for including the other articles. I can't find anything after early 2019. You're right, they must be just trying to maintain nonprofit status without running programing. Samside26 (talk) 20:22, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

USSA seems to be the renamed National Student Association

If the USSA is not a new organization, rather, a reorganization and renaming of the National Student Association, which atm seems to be the case, how should it be treated in this article? For example, in the infobox: the NSA was founded in 1947, not 1978, and USSA documents and other sources refer to USSA history going back to...1947.

In fact, if it's all the same organization, having two articles for it is like splitting an organization article into parts, which leads to its own naming problem, like, "NSA (1978-present)" with a redirect from USSA? Puzzling! :) Tsavage (talk) 18:25, 20 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]