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EDITORIAL: More money, more problems
Editorial | 5/20/08
Posted online at 6:20 AM EST on 5/20/08
As it stands, efficiency is not a top characteristic of this University's Student Union, at least not when it comes to money.
The Union recently unveiled that a whopping $100,000 of our Student Activities Fee money-which constitutes 1 percent of our total tuition-went unspent last year. Evidently, the funds were left over from the budget allocated to the Union by the University each year.
This in itself is somewhat infuriating. Financial concerns plague many students and their families, and it would be comforting to know that the Union is keeping this in mind and taking absolutely no more money from us than necessary through the school. Instead of calling for a student vote on how to spend these excess funds, the first instinct of those responsible for this surplus should have been to get the money back to the students who need it. A simple solution would have been to charge less money for next year's SAF.
Still, the vote happened, and the winning student proposal, with 496 votes, was the purchase of new equipment for and other improvements to the weight room in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.
Yet this vote is at best inconclusive. The second-most popular proposal, the addition of solar panels to an unspecified Brandeis building, lost out by only .66 percent with 474 votes-hardly a significant margin.
This page also does not understand the policy of a single round of voting. With such a small margin between the two choices, a second round of voting should have been held with only the top two options. Why should there be only one round of voting simply because the ballot said so? Just because one student voted on, say, a delegation of students to Rwanda in the first round doesn't mean he shouldn't have a say in the final decision between two other, closely contested options.
Moreover, the Gosman proposal didn't even receive a majority of the votes. Students already angered by the careless management of their funds will be further angered when they find out that their money will be spent by such a small group of their peers, without respect to whether or not the proposal will prove a succesful expenditure of the money.
Regardless of the path it's taken through the deep canals of the University's bureaucracy, that money still belongs to the student body. We should be in better agreement than this about what to do with the money, and we regret that a new round of voting wasn't held to decide upon a better direction for these funds.
The Union recently unveiled that a whopping $100,000 of our Student Activities Fee money-which constitutes 1 percent of our total tuition-went unspent last year. Evidently, the funds were left over from the budget allocated to the Union by the University each year.
This in itself is somewhat infuriating. Financial concerns plague many students and their families, and it would be comforting to know that the Union is keeping this in mind and taking absolutely no more money from us than necessary through the school. Instead of calling for a student vote on how to spend these excess funds, the first instinct of those responsible for this surplus should have been to get the money back to the students who need it. A simple solution would have been to charge less money for next year's SAF.
Still, the vote happened, and the winning student proposal, with 496 votes, was the purchase of new equipment for and other improvements to the weight room in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.
Yet this vote is at best inconclusive. The second-most popular proposal, the addition of solar panels to an unspecified Brandeis building, lost out by only .66 percent with 474 votes-hardly a significant margin.
This page also does not understand the policy of a single round of voting. With such a small margin between the two choices, a second round of voting should have been held with only the top two options. Why should there be only one round of voting simply because the ballot said so? Just because one student voted on, say, a delegation of students to Rwanda in the first round doesn't mean he shouldn't have a say in the final decision between two other, closely contested options.
Moreover, the Gosman proposal didn't even receive a majority of the votes. Students already angered by the careless management of their funds will be further angered when they find out that their money will be spent by such a small group of their peers, without respect to whether or not the proposal will prove a succesful expenditure of the money.
Regardless of the path it's taken through the deep canals of the University's bureaucracy, that money still belongs to the student body. We should be in better agreement than this about what to do with the money, and we regret that a new round of voting wasn't held to decide upon a better direction for these funds.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Stephen Costa (Budget Analyst for S&E)
posted 5/21/08 @ 1:40 PM EST
The money the "rollover" vote pertained to represents funds carried over from previous years' SAF, not this year's SAF, similar to what happened with the Usdan Game Room a few years ago. (Continued…)
club leader
posted 8/23/08 @ 11:39 PM EST
As a club-leader for several groups, color me disappointed. Every trip to the F-Board is like pulling teeth, and to find out that over the years they had accumulated such a surplus is stunning, as they act as if every $15 could make or break the budget. (Continued…)
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