One million, seven hundred eighty-two thousand, two hundred and twelve dollars. Drawn from the General Fee we pay with tuition, this is the funding Penn student government received for the current academic year. Most students are oblivious to the inner-workings of that six-tentacled creature, student government, though interest has been raised in the past few weeks. But this our money. And we should demand better accountability in how it is spent.
Much of the spending goes to fund Penn’s student groups. The Student Activities Council, one of the six branches of student government, is responsible for allocating more than $800,000 to over 140 student groups across campus that received funding this year. That makes it arguably the branch with the greatest daily impact on undergraduates. And I believe it is in serious need of reform.
SAC’s general body is composed of representatives chosen by each SAC-funded and -recognized group. It elects, from this membership, an executive committee to administer decision-making and issue recommendations to the general body. The executive committee also selects a chairperson.
Conflicts of interest are strictly controlled. But, of course, members of the executive committee have an indispensable understanding of the funding process and the politics involved. Their ability to influence, even indirectly, the outcome of decisions made by SAC is critically important.
According to current chairwoman and College senior Natalie Vernon, SAC is “by student groups, for student groups.” But Parliamentary Debate, which has 45 student participants including Vernon, received $11,061 of funding this year, the sixth-largest amount and dramatically more per student than most other groups.
By student groups, for student groups, indeed.
To put it simply, SAC doesn’t directly serve the students’ interests and creates funding inequities. Given how its decisions touch almost every undergraduate at Penn, this is unacceptable.
SAC received $823,511 from the Undergraduate Assembly for the current academic year. It has distributed $583,296, or roughly $60 for each undergraduate, to student groups. The remainder has been apportioned to the Performing Arts Council, set aside for the fall and spring Student Activities Fairs or held in contingency funds.
In a crude analysis of this academic year’s allocations, I found that some groups receive disproportionately more funding than others.
Take two examples. Parliamentary Debate is receiving approximately $250 per member. Mock Trial receives $320 per member.
At the other end of the range, Penn Political Review receives $130 per member. And Penn Appetit, the student food magazine, receives about $100 per member.
Mock Trial and Penn Parli require significantly more funding because of travel and tournament fees — they are more expensive activities. But publications are accessible to all students in a way that most groups are not — see the dilemma?
It is evident that some students are financing the enrichment of other students’ college experience. But Penn is not Obamerica, where some people get fleeced for the “greater good.” The fees we pay to the University should not be redistributed so unequally.
Here is a radical but elegant solution: Let students decide, directly. We could accomplish this with a voucher system. Give each student $60, split across two semesters, to allocate to groups as he or she sees fit.Student groups would compete, in a marketplace, for dollars. And only those that are successful would continue to exist.
A SAC would still exist to play an administrative role, oversee spending and provide supplementary funds as needed. But its members — and its chairman — should be democratically elected to guarantee students’ interests are respected.
While the UA absorbs itself in yet another meaningless, largely symbolic “reform” — replacing the position of UA chairperson with a democratically elected student body president — students wait for the sort of change that could actually make a difference.
David Lei is a Wharton senior from Brooklyn, NY. He is the former executive editor of the DP and the executive director of College Republicans. His e-mail address is lei@dailypennsylvanian.com
Comments
Not all markets are created equal.
Of course someone on the DP (an organization whose business model is inexorably tied to publicity) would promote this kind of a system. Allowing every student on campus the same amount of money to dole out to whichever group they choose would disproportionately benefit groups that are widely known around campus.
Now I'm all for greater transparency in the SAC budget process, however the proposal in this article is counter-productive and yet another naive example of a poorly-designed market solution which would actually make the situation worse.
Such a system does not incentivize people who do not directly participate in UA- or SAC-funded groups to apportion their money in any socially efficient way. It thereby reduces the funding process to a pure popularity contest, forcing groups whose missions are less publicized (though perhaps no less valuable to the Penn community) to spend money on publicity campaigns in an attempt to woo these disinterested students. Arguably, forcing student groups into a publicity arms race would result in an even less-efficient use of funds than under the system currently in place.
A market only functions properly if access is restricted to those who can benefit from the goods exchanged on that market and who can readily identify the benefit that they receive. For students not directly tied to UA- or SAC-funded groups, the benefit they receive from any one of these groups is virtually impossible for them to identify. This problem is only compounded by the lack of incentives for them to even try to identify such a benefit and allocate their money appropriately.
just doesn't get it
travel groups inherently will have higher budgetary needs than non-travel groups so hating on the sky for being blue shows a rudimentary level of analysis. did the author bother to point out that travel groups only get 50% of their costs funded while other groups get significantly higher percentages? you say a voucher system would be "fairer" but don't really say how. if more people gave to travel groups would you be ok with that? doesn't seem so because travel groups "are not accessible to the entire student body." see the dilemma? every group chooses their sac reps who then in turn elects the sac board. where is the democracy gap? plus, you go so far as to say that the UA allowing for a democratically elected chair is "meaningless" but then say SAC should do the same thing?? what gives?