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Supporters of the Bruin Diversity Initiative poured hundreds of volunteer hours and thousands of dollars into passing the measure. Those students must now rethink how their organizations are financed.
On Thursday, the initiative failed to pass by a margin of 4.2 percent. As a result, many student services and jobs that would have been funded by the initiative may have to be curbed or cut.
The Campus Retention Committee’s Writing Success Program, for instance, will not be able to serve the number of students they currently reach and may even cut student jobs, said Kenneth Ramos, fifth-year American Indian studies student and spokesperson for the initiative.
The failure of the initiative suggests that students have refused to continue to bear the brunt of these organizations’ funding problems, particularly in light of the fact that many of them received funding from PLEDGE, a fee increase of $12.75, just four years ago. Part of the PLEDGE fee increase also funded the Communications Board, which oversees the Daily Bruin.
But perhaps more importantly, student groups must now recognize that initiatives put to a popular vote are hardly a reliable avenue by which to secure funding, despite good intentions and worthy programming.
Including PLEDGE, the Campus Retention Committee has been the recipient of additional funds from student fee increases six times since 1990; the Student Initiated Access Committee has been a recipient four times.
In order to better preserve their financial footing, the organizations impacted by the Bruin Diversity Initiative should look to long-term solutions, such as lobbying the university for supplementary funding or extending and rethinking their own fundraising efforts.
However dire the situation for these groups may be, fee increases are not a sustainable solution to chronic fiscal problems.
Ramos and other initiative spokespeople said they could not guarantee that this fee increase would prevent other fee increases in the future. Putting new funding measures in front of the student body every few years represents a surface-level solution to a systemic problem.
The current system of distributing student fee money is inefficient and often results in large amounts of student fees going unused by the organizations they were supposed to benefit. For example, PLEDGE created the Student Risk Education Committee fund, which is infrequently tapped by student groups that qualify for its funding and results in carryover funds, said Cynthia Jasso, USAC Finance Committee chair.
These funds go unspent because so many of the student groups that qualify for their funding simply don’t know about it, said Cynthia Jasso, USAC Finance Committee chair.
Jasso also expressed concerns that the Greek Life Programming Fund, a line item in the Bruin Diversity Initiative, would have shared the same fate. Greek organizations have historically applied for USAC funding at very low rates, which did not bode well for the funds this initiative would have allocated them. Future measures should ensure the utility and efficiency of money they supply.
But efficiency walks hand in hand with the specificity of newly created revenue sources. The Bruin Bash Referendum, which passed by a margin of 20 percent, might have been more easily digestible for many students because it funds one event with clear, direct benefits for all students.
The varied benefits of the Bruin Diversity Initiative, which had 13 different line items, may have been more difficult for students to grasp, especially since the results of the new funding would not be easily visible to them.
If the student body sees a fee referendum or initiative on next year’s ballot, it would be the third year running that such a measure appeared.
Moreover, if students are to pass a fee increase, it must be able to promise transparency, specificity and a sustainable plan for funding the vibrant campus organizations that stand to benefit.
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Correction: The name of the Student Initiated Access Committee was not updated.
I don’t really understand where the fees are going. If they are at risk for losing jobs/positions, where is the money going to? I understand that if you want to expand something, you need to have the funds for it, but this is not the case here. They’re trying to preserve jobs/positions, which really begs the question – where exactly are our student fees going?
And we raised CRC funding 6 TIMES? AND SIOC 4 times? I want to see their bookkeeping because I really do not understand why they keep raising fees.