More Money For Student Groups?
Vote For It.

Who sits on the Student Finance Committee? For that matter, who sits on the Educational Plans and Policies, Housing and Dining and departmental majors committees? Forum Board? Know what Forum Board is? There are things going on all around us which have a major impact on every aspect of our lives as Oberlin students, and we are ignorant of them, willfully or not. Quick, name a student senator. Name a power allocated to Senate. Most students have no idea who runs things around here. They are content to lay all responsibility at the feet of President Nancy Dye, Dean of Students Peter Goldsmith and Associate Dean of Students Bill Stackman.

Part of this is a fault of the organizations themselves. Names of committee members should be public knowledge, as should the selection process itself. Senate especially should be more conscious of making sure everyone knows what it does and how it does it. The new bulletin board is a big start, but only a start. Every semester a set of elections rolls around, and Senate candidates vow change, only to disappear into the void, never to be seen or heard from again except in the occasional Review pullquote. SFC, widely considered the most powerful committee on campus, interviews for new members every semester but since the process occurs through Senate, it depends on Senate’s publicity or lack thereof to let everyone know. Same for EPPC, which actually gives students two-year terms working on important issues like creation of new tenured positions and departments like Comparative American Studies. In fact, Senate controls interviews for J-Board. No one is suggesting that J-Board’s members be public, but its selection process should not be hidden in the Senate bylaws, and the cutesy ads Senate puts out every once in a while should be replaced by a serious information campaign.

Forum Board, just to add to the general knowledge, is the organization designed to fund speakers that student groups want to bring in. It receives a $20,000 lump sum from SFC at the beginning of each school year. This way SFC only has to fund 1/3 of any given speaker an organization requests and can refer the group to Forum Board for the rest. Forum Board wasn’t very active last year, to the point that SFC was researching whether it could take the money back (it couldn’t). Ideally, though, if FB does what it’s supposed to, it takes a considerable burden off SFC. Also, many speakers are willing to lower their honorariums and travel costs if they’re dealing with colleges they respect, which includes Oberlin, and with student groups that are organized and respectful.

As for SFC, not only is it seen as one of the campus’s most powerful committees (although in reality it’s eclipsed by Housing and Dining and EPPC), it’s also one of the least understood. SFC receives the $170 that each student pays in activity fees, to divide among all student organizations that ask. There’s a list of standard allocations from which the committee works. These include standards for publicity and media resources, and a percentage for speakers as well as a specific number of programs a semester. Arbitrary numbers can and should be frowned upon. And SFC is accountable in the final analysis to Senate. Groups can even take a budget in front of Senate if they feel an Appeal has failed and the process was unfair. Making the names of SFC members public (and publicizing the other organizations they’re involved in) would go even further toward making allocations fair and unbiased. For those who complain about funds, ponder: while tuition increases by the rate of inflation, the activity fee doesn’t, and must be changed by SFC and approved by Senate and General Faculty. That’s why there’s a upcoming referendum to have the fee increase by the rate of inflation also. That means more money for student organizations in proportion to any tuition increase. The Review endorses this referendum, which can only benefit those organizations which would like to see SFC give them more money. Students have a right to know how things work, and committees have the right to go about their business unmolested by unwarranted complaints. If we can fix the former, we can do away with the latter.