Pinched by a budget shortage, student groups have had to scale back and cancel programming events that better the UCLA community. CURE, the Contingency USA–BOD Referendum Enactment, is a referendum that will increase student fees by $3 a quarter in order to help address these issues, and it is the most stable and effective solution to save the programs that have made our campus great.
The Daily Bruin editorial board has called upon USAC and student groups to work within their current budget. In their own words “funding for some student groups will be in jeopardy next year … this is a sacrifice that must be made for USAC’s long-term.”
Despite this strong claim, the Daily Bruin itself receives $3 a quarter per student, allocated via a referendum passed three years ago ““ money that comes from student fees. When the Daily Bruin was posed with these funding issues three years ago, the problem was not systematic fiscal irresponsibility, but simply a lack of crucial funding.
What makes funding for the Daily Bruin pertinent but funding for admit weekends, community service and cultural nights wasteful? The Daily Bruin fails to recognize the congruency between the PLEDGE referendum of three years ago that provided their funding and the ones that will support all student groups in the coming years. CURE is not a measure that whitewashes systematic funding problems, but is intended for the same purposes as the previous referendum: to make up for this dearth of funding.
These problems are nothing new to the realm of USAC funding; rather, they are now coming to light. Looking at surplus, where funding for Contingency and USA–BOD is currently drawn from, in past years the number was approximately $500,000 (or 25 percent of the student fees from the previous year). In the current fiscal year surplus shrunk by $250,000.
Council’s spending on events such as Homecoming and Bruin Bash is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Despite the fact that this year’s council spent more than $120,000 less from surplus than either previous two councils, there are still funding issues because relying on surplus as a source for Contingency and USA–BOD is a systematic problem that needs a solution. That solution is the CURE referendum.
The student fees used to support the Daily Bruin functions to support an operation that the editorial board believes is vital to the UCLA community. The CURE referendum seeks to support other groups similarly vital to the UCLA community. Just from this past week alone, Vietnamese Student Union, Unicamp and Colleges Against Cancer received funding from Contingency to be used for their programs.
These funding bodies support cultural awareness, community service and a number of other worthy causes. Furthermore, CURE is a fiscally responsible solution. Being tied to inflation, the referendum finally allots funding that is coupled with a stable structure.
Although the issue has been cast as funding wasted on few students, the reality of it is that CURE will fund a plethora of groups hosting activities that benefit all students. While students are right to look critically at student fee increases, especially during a rough economic time for many households, to mischaracterize these fees as wasteful is a disservice to the students and groups across campus that help build the UCLA community.
Daniel Feeney, Co-Executive Director, Project Literacy
Catherine Chiang, President, China Care Bruins
Rizwan Zafer, President, Muslim Students’ Association