The Student Services Finance Committee held its first budget hearing of the semester Monday. Over the next several weeks, SSFC will hold several more hearings to determine its allocation of segregated fees to student organizations.
Student organizations often propose inflated budgets as part of the back-and-forth negotiations with SSFC. This year, however, several student groups have asked for exorbitantly large increases in funding. For example, the Multicultural Student Coalition is now requesting $977,418, and the Asian and Pacific American Council wants $292,830 from SSFC. Those two figures are more than six times what the two groups received last year, and together they nearly match the $1.3 million given to all student organizations for the 2001-02 school year.
Many of the groups requesting large increases in funding are student-of-color organizations. These groups are valuable parts of our campus community, and improving campus climate is a goal worthy of student funding. But blindly throwing money at such problems do not solve them.
It is hard to imagine how paying $46,000 per year for MCSC to rent a new office space (and then spending $18,000 for new carpet in that office) would further the goal of improved diversity on campus. How would the MCSC's purchase of 12-$400 rolling desk chairs, a $1,500 TV set and a $7,128 camcorder, including accessories, benefit the student body at large?
One problem with many of these requests is that student organizations are trying to take on too much of the UW-Madison administration's responsibility. The other problem is that these figures are ridiculous no matter what the groups are attempting to do. This type of self-destructive behavior, which can only turn students against the organizations submitting these budget proposals, appears to be a case of some groups looking for political trouble.
Problems of campus diversity cannot be solved by students alone, and it is the university that should be budgeting much of the money for administrative costs and basic resources. The requests filed by these student groups will damage their perceived legitimacy, thereby hindering their own attempts to improve the cultural climate of this campus.
Furthermore, the average student is unaware of what many student groups represent or what they do, and can only look skeptically at budget requests that rise into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is not simply the fault of an apathetic student body; it is a failing among many student groups to adequately communicate their purposes with most students on this campus.
Inflated budget proposals, while not uncommon, are harmful to the system. They serve only to reinforce the negative, money-grabbing image that Scott Southworth attempted to give student organizations in his lawsuit against the UW System. They convey the impression that some student organizations are less about volunteerism and learning than providing student salaries and outsourcing university responsibility.
Student groups asking for high sums of money have an obligation to be more responsible with their budget requests while better informing the student body of what they hope to accomplish. The university has an obligation to more adequately provide student services in obvious areas of concern, such as campus diversity'not just to pay lip service to an ideal.
