An Invented Mandate

It began with the simple word “believe” and ended with an invented mandate. While the recent referendum on increasing the Student Activities Fee for the Undergraduate Council did, indeed, pass, its low turnout and close outcome present serious concern.

These concerns, I feel, are three-fold. First and foremost, I am concerned by the low turnout and extremely narrow margin of passage that the first question of the referendum yielded. According to the official results, only 35 percent of the student body voted in the referendum, and the fee increase from $35 to $75 was passed by the margin of 53.2 percent to 46.8 percent (1,189 votes for, 1,046 against).

Herein lie two aspects of great concern. While the council has claimed the referendum’s results as a mandate from students, in reality only 18.62 percent of the student body expressed support for the measure (53.2 percent of the 35 percent of students who voted). While the spirit of majority rule deserves respect, the fact is that in general, students who participate in referenda and measures like these can ordinarily be expected to be significantly more involved in campus activities and campus politics than those who did not vote. Therefore, to say that a majority of students supports the increase is highly misleading. The majority of students active in politics may have, but they are certainly not representative of the whole student body.

Secondly, while the referendum may have been passed by a majority of those who voted, the harm that this increase is likely to have on those who did not support it is likely to far outweigh the benefits to those who did support it. From conversations that I have had, it is clear that many students are not themselves largely responsible for paying their term bills (due to parents covering the costs and so on). For them there is no downside to increasing the fee, as the increase may yield marginal benefits to them. Therefore, they have every incentive to favor the increase. On the other hand, for students who opposed the increase, the higher cost may represent more of a financial hardship. While I am not suggesting that $40 will force students into poverty, I do want to show that the issue is not as cut-and-dry as it may initially appear.

This brings me to the second major concern regarding the fee increase. While the council’s aim is to increase its budget to allow for greater funding of campus events and student group activities, increasing the fee by such a large amount (more than doubling it) may actually defeat the goal that it hopes to accomplish. As the extremely close results of the referendum show, many students are not in favor of such an increase. While many may happily support the current $35 activities fee, increasing it to $75 will likely cause many to opt out of its payment. The result would be both a sense of alienation among students and a significant decrease in council revenue. Although revenue may not decrease below its current level, the result will become highly inequitable: students who opt out of the fee will pay nothing, while those who do pay it will pay a significant amount. While some increase in the activities fee, such as one for inflation, may be justified, prudence should be used in deciding this.

Lastly, I would like to call attention to the arbitrary nature in which this fee increase proposal was decided upon by the council. Because the goal of the fee increase was to ensure that the council’s budget would be large enough for the events it wished to put on, the process should have begun with an assessment of the council’s need, with the amount of the fee corresponding to the amount of the need. However, the reverse was done: the council first chose a number (originally $100), and then discerned how many events of various types it could accomplish with this budget. In fact, drafts of budgets circulated by proponents of the increase did not even consider what these events would be—they merely cited previous events, such as the hypnotist event the council held this February, and added “times 2” or “times 4.” When the council finally decided to pursue a fee increase to $75, it was only by amendment of the original amount. Again, the number was chosen first, and a sample budget was composed after.

I fear that the arbitrary nature of the selection process, coupled with the lack of budgetary specificity on the part of the council, signal glaring problems both with the council’s ability to handle the more than doubled budget that the increase would bring and also the high likelihood that the student body will not be significantly positively impacted by the fee increase.

It is for these reasons that I strongly urge Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 not to endorse and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences not to approve the increase in the Student Activities Fee. While the council may be well-intentioned, the process was not sound and the student mandate is virtually nonexistent. With such a small margin of a small turnout, on an issue with such ignored complexity, the students have not spoken.

Joseph R. Oliveri ’05 is a government concentrator in Eliot House. He is a representative on the Undergraduate Council.