OSCA investing a practice in cooperative values

Stop and think for a minute: what was your last purchase? Unless you're meticulously careful to record every investment's where-abouts, you may not remember. After all, most students leave it up to finance committees to keep track of their education and its strict financial stability, rather than doing in themselves. Oberlin Student Co-operative Association (OSCA), however, combines a little of both.

Based on the idea of co-ops that each member is an avid contributor, OSCA aims to invest its budget in diverse, relevant areas within and beyond the Oberlin community. "All of our money is invested in socially responsible organizations," OSCA treasurer and sophomore Dan Spalding said.

For starters, OSCA keeps its money under supervision of private finance alliances as opposed to corporate banks, or even the smaller Lorain National Bank branch. The budget is invested in the Calvert Group and Working Assets, both of which "screen out the bad people," as Spalding put it. These smaller firms focus on helping out community groups instead of just raking excess interest from unwitting members.

OSCA, too, is more interested in helping out the local community than making a profit. While the majority of the budget consists of semester costs per student and general operating funds - accounting for about $1,134,000 total - private loans add to OSCA's budget as well as helping out local groups.

For example, Fund for an Open Society, one of OSCA's loan holders, helps out a society for de-segregating neighborhoods. This active community outreach side of OSCA may go unnoticed by the average co-oper.

In addition to larger organizations like Fund for an Open Society, OSCA also lent out money last year to Oberlin Sustainable Agriculture Project and the pottery co-op among other on-campus groups. And with a $1.8 million budget, OSCA can afford to be generous.

"It's big," Spalding said of the budget. "Some of it comes from membership and some is carried over from past years." However, the biggest contributions to the budget are indeed the numerous loans.

Spalding said that the students have a large say in how the budget is distributed each year. Every co-op member is tied in with the decisions since each individual finance committee representative initially meets with their respective co-op before meeting with each other. "If there are any thorny issues [within the co-op], the representatives bring the information back [to the committee]," Spalding said. After the finance committee compiles the budget, Spalding, OSCA Finance Manager Iris Hunt and the individual representatives from each co-op convene to make final budget decisions. Finally, after the next year's budget has been agreed upon, the whole proposal is voted on by co-op members.

While future investments are constantly in the works, one of next year's important issues deals with reviewing the OSCA-College rent contract - a project that takes place every three years. "We're concerned about how much the College is charging us," Spalding said. While OSCA's rent has increased 4 percent each year since the last contract review - a fee amounting to $975,000 for this year - the College only raised its own rent for students 3 percent. "They're gouging us," Spalding said. "Most people in OSCA don't know how much of their board fees go straight to the college."

Even with potential conflicts between OSCA and the College concerning the contract review, the co-op system serves as a stable, welcome option for non-CDS students. "We charge $1000 less [than College board], " Spalding said. "We do all of our own work, cook for ourselves, clean for ourselves and handle our own finances."

In many ways, the OSCA finance program is the perfect example of a functioning, balanced budget. "We're not just more efficient [than the college]," Spalding said, "we're socially responsible."