Author: Zoe Richards

Financial officers of special fees groups are stirring.

They came out in relative force at last night’s ASSU Undergraduate Senate meeting, where last week senators enacted a bill disallowing student groups from requesting an increase in special fees beyond inflation without more stringent student body approval.

 

On Tuesday, the bill faced challenges to both its merits and the rules surrounding the vote that passed it. Some student group leaders complained of short notice to organize opposition to the bill, and said the legislation would hinder their ability to collect special fees money and provide programming to students.

 

But authors of the bill maintained that it is a necessary step to reducing the rate of students’ requesting refunds on their special fees, curbing spending out of the ASSU buffer fund and promoting greater student body engagement with the process of funding student groups.

Matt McLaughlin ’08, the ASSU financial manager, emphasized that this single piece of legislation is unlikely to leverage large-scale positive change. “I think that the special fees won’t decrease,” he said. “Refund rates, we hope, will at least remain constant, but there are a whole series of other reforms. This is by no means the lynchpin.”

Special Fees Bill Needs More Student Input, F.O. Says

Minh Dan Vuong ’11, the financial officer for Alternative Spring Break, last night registered his disappointment and urged the Senate to reconsider its decision, this time with more student input.

According to Vuong, the one week’s notice that financial officers received prior to the bill’s passage — per the Senate’s previous notice rules — was not enough for groups to mobilize a response. Additionally, he claimed, the information session held by the Appropriations Committee one day after the bill passed was unacceptable and failed to consider the voices of VSOs.

“This bill creates a bunch of unintended consequences,” Vuong told the body. “Groups, for instance, will have incentive to overstate their costs.”

Stephanie Epps ‘10, former chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and current Black Student Union (BSU) co-president, argued that the new legislation opens a “Pandora’s box” by discouraging moderation. In light of the legislation, Epps suggested that many student groups will be re-evaluating their budgets and asking for more money from special fees than they did previously.

“For the goal that you are trying to serve, it is doing the exact opposite,” Epps said. “You’re not going to offset the student activities fee at all. You’re going to increase it by a lot.”

According to Senator Alex Katz ’12, Administration and Rules Committee chair, the bill was created in the spirit of allowing students more fiscal control to determine student groups funding.

“Special fees now represents $2.5 million,” Katz said, referring to the amount of financial pressure special fees put on each student at $119 per quarter — the most recent figure available as the accounting of refund requests continues.

“My belief, and the belief of many senators here, is that the student body deserves more control over the way our money is spent,” he added.

Senator Shelley Gao ’11 rebuffed “minority interest groups” in the special fees process, saying she supports the ordinary student who may not have time to attend meetings and dictate his or her interests.

“I am representing the silent majority,” Gao said.

Tommy Tobin ‘10, director of the student group SPOON, challenged Gao’s position, suggesting that issues concerning special fees and refund rates are more reflective of an uneducated student body rather than the public’s “tacit approval [of the bill and special fees].”

Other senators stood by the bill as an effective step along a path toward increasing transparency and allowing students more fiscal control.

“This isn’t a bad bill,” said Anton Zietsman ‘12, chair of the Appropriations Committee. “We’re making special fees groups accountable to the student body.”

“I just can’t see how this bill introduces the possibility that any group that’s legitimate does not receive funding,” Senator Adam Creasman ’11 added.

Although many VSO leaders are dubious about the prospects of the bill’s success in deflating special fees costs — and refund rates, for that matter — Senate Chair Varun Sivaram ‘11 said the bill had the potential to be beneficial.

“The bill was intended to curb the growth of special fees. If it is the case that without this bill, special fees would have grown more, then the bill has succeeded,” Sivaram said.

Alluding to the possibility of students’ again approving all special fees groups with budgets of astronomical proportions, Senator Mohammad Ali ’10 asked, “What’s the contingency plan if and when the bill fails?”

“This is one plank,” Katz said, adding that the bill represents a small piece in a much larger framework for reform.

Still, many in attendance expressed worry that the bill’s approval was too hasty. Michael Tubbs ’12 suggested that the bill does not get at “real pragmatic solutions” and that more research ought to be done to decipher student opinion on special fees concerns.

Limón’s Status Still Without A Verdict: Senator or Not?

To add to the meeting’s legislative frustrations, the status of former Senator Daniel Limón ’12 has yet to be resolved, making voting procedures at best confusing and laborious for the group as a whole.

After Limón took a leave of absence during fall quarter, he expected to return with ease to his position in the association. However, the ambiguity of his situation persists as the Senate decides whether or not he may constitutionally rejoin the ranks without issue.

In a 10-4 re-vote for the special fees bill that excluded the Senate’s former 15th member, Limón, the bill was passed for a second time, a favorable win for most senators.

In addition, the Senate confirmed graduate student Elicia Blackford as executive director of the Student Service Division; also, all funding bills on the table were approved.

As donations toward relief for the Haiti earthquake level off, Executive team members said they are considering adding another position to the cabinet that would address humanitarian aid concerns. ASSU President David Gobaud, a coterminal student in computer science, has said he would move $500 from his salary to create the position.

Undergraduate senators last night acted on the advice of the ASSU financial manager to prevent rapid losses to the funds that protect student groups when students request special fees refunds.

According to a refund review presented at last night’s meeting, the projected increase in student refund requests for special fees funding could cause a premature exhaustion of the undergraduate “buffer fund” intended to buoy student groups hit hard by students’ decisions to withdraw financial support from various groups.

To date, the buffer has provided unequivocal financial stability to student groups recovering financially from the aftershock of special fees refund request rates. Going forward, the fund will continue do so, but now with more stringent regulations.

Beginning this quarter, the buffer fund will guarantee special fees funding for student groups up to 10 percent after refunds. Any deviation above this will require a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the group’s overall budget by the amount of the refunds demanded by students in the first three weeks of the quarter.

Although the measure was added to the joint bylaws during a reform of special fees policy in 2004, its implementation is unprecedented — until now.

“There is a rule in the joint bylaws that essentially orders me to take the refund buffer and match it up against the refund rate,” said ASSU Financial Manager Matt McLaughlin. “This rule has never been implemented because there’s never been a need to.”

Looking at trends over the past five years, McLaughlin has projected that by the end of fiscal year 2010, $90,000 will be returned to students in refund requests, while the buffer fund only ensures up to $50,000.

According to the provision, losses in special fees funding over 10 percent as a result of rising refund rates will be collected from each student group’s reserve first and then by budget line item.

Since special fees policy reform several years ago, students have been requesting special fees refunds at a lower rate than the actual refund buffer, which has bolstered the fund since its creation. But based on McLaughlin’s projections of significant increases in the demand for student refunds, the buffer fund could be in trouble if adequate action is not taken to save it.

Without the buffer fund, McLaughlin argued that student group budgets would be “raided very quickly.” He expressed concern for the future protection of special fees funding to student groups if the buffer fund becomes depleted.

“Funding on student life would come to an absolute standstill, and there would be no extra bucket of cash to honor any refunds through the system without delving right into the funds,” he said.

McLaughlin pointed out that he was unaware of the provision until now, but, because of it, is convinced that the buffer fund can be salvaged. Failure to follow through on such a provision would cut short a fund intended to provide rescue support for groups hit hard by refund requests, he suggested.

In order to secure some additional impact cushioning for the expected backlash of student refund requests, which could dip into special fees funding for student groups, the ASSU already tacks on an additional 10 percent to the total special fees sum billed to each student. However, in some cases, this 10 percent has not been enough.

“The question is,” he said, “am I ringing the alarm bell too loud with this projection, or am I ringing it too softly?”

To date for winter quarter, there have already been 250 more refund requests than last quarter.

McLaughlin’s most recent data also suggests that certain special fees groups are being hit upward of 12 percent due to special fees refund requests — only 10 percent of which will be covered by the buffer fund. On average, each group could owe $900 a year to account for refund rates, with some student groups, such as Stanford Concert Network (SCN) and the KZSU radio station, in the upper bounds of this sum.

“We’re swallowing some hard pills,” said Senator Zack Warma ’11, also columns editor for The Daily, adding that enforcing the measure is a “responsible step.”

Still, McLaughlin’s implementation of the measure does not cap the ballooning costs of special fees, which have increased from $90 a quarter three years ago, to $119 a quarter for the current fiscal year.

Ryan Peacock, financial officer for the Graduate Student Council, has said the body will hold office hours to give advice to groups on how to combat refund rates.

“If people don’t want to give their money to [special fees groups] we shouldn’t be bankrupting the ASSU because of that,” Peacock said, adding that student groups need to leverage better public relations with the student body to guarantee funding and reduce refund requests.

In terms of future measures to prevent the damage of refunds rates to student groups’ budgets, Senator Alex Katz ‘12 offered the possibility of a constitutional amendment that would hold voters accountable to fund groups that they approve through the special fees ballot.

“If someone can vote in favor of that group, then they need to be held accountable for that vote,” Katz said.

In a feedback questionnaire that garnered 40 responses from financial officers for student groups, the Senate appropriations committee yielded an average numerical approval rating of 2.91 on a scale of one to five, which Senate Chair Varun Sivaram ’11 said might suggest “some measure of dissatisfaction.”

Dissatisfied groups may be reacting to the significantly lower funding rate, which has decreased from approximately 70 percent in previous years to 30 percent so far this year. However, the constructive criticism will be used to improve the funding process, which continues to be challenging through the economic downturn.