This editorial board is actually impressed that the University Senate can keep making the wrong decision on the student fee review process over and over again. In the senate’s latest gaff, its most powerful committee – the Senate Executive Committee – voted to send forward three useless recommendations on “revamping” the process by which departments request mandatory student fees to the full body, which will debate and likely vote on them at its April 19 meeting.
To understand just how silly this is, let’s backtrack for a second. In October, Student Government Association President Kaiyi Xie and Graduate Student Government President Anna Bedford submitted a proposal to the senate outlining concrete ways to improve the student fee review process. For the last several years, it’s been an extremely shady operation; departments ranging from Transportation Services to Athletics seek little student input when deciding to charge the actual constituency. Additionally, scarce records by the Committee for the Review of Student Fees are taken when the departments actually do justify how the money will be spent.
Xie and Bedford had some pretty good ideas. They recommended creating a student advisory board to OK the fee proposals before they even reach the review committee and mandating detailed minutes be taken to increase accountability. It makes sense; if these departments want to charge students money, they should have to justify those fees.
The Student Affairs Committee was charged with reviewing the proposals. Apparently, because members ran out of time, they chose to ignore Xie and Bedford’s recommendations and instead approved three watered-down recommendations: Departments must meet with the review committee to discuss fee requests, meet with constituency groups before making fee requests and justify how fees will be used. These suggestions are essentially meaningless because they lack any accountability measures and don’t ensure students will be consulted before the fees are proposed.
The recommendations moved onto the Senate Executive Committee, which could either vote to send them to the full body for another vote, or back to the Student Affairs Committee for further consideration. Considering that the committee’s chairwoman Rachel Cooper admitted the silly proposals were passed because the meeting ran out of time, this editorial board had hoped the SEC would give Cooper more time to adequately address them.
Unfortunately, we were wrong again. The full senate will consider the recommendations at its next meeting and since the year is coming to an end, it seems likely that they will be passed and senators will consider the matter.
There is a glimmer of hope: Xie and other senators drafted a minority report outlining their dissatisfaction at how the process has played out. The Senate Executive Committee even recognized how rare it is for such an extreme measure to be taken.
“It’s going to get attention,” Senate Parliamentarian Marvin Breslow said. “When’s the last time you saw a minority report in the senate? Maybe once in the last 10 years, or something like that. … There should be a very full discussion.”
If that was the case, why did the executive committee vote to move the recommendations forward? Given how extreme Xie’s minority report apparently is, why didn’t the committee think the proposal needed more time to be fleshed out before it reached the full senate?
Unfortunately, it’s too late now. The executive committee has (incorrectly) spoken and the proposals are moving forward. Xie and other students will likely make a last stand at the senate meeting, urging senators to vote to send it back to committee. To this editorial board, that’s the only responsible decision. Cooper admitted the recommendations were made in haste; the senate needs to handle this important situation thoroughly, not quickly.
