General Studies Lounge - ARCHIVE 2006-2011

This evening, in my first ever meeting in my new capacity as 2008-2009 student body president, I worked with current president Nancy J. Saunders and incoming VP of Finance Elie Colie to bring greater transparency to how your student life fees are allocated. We did this through helping argue for and then ratify changes to the "Funding at Columbia University" (F@CU) meeting where student council funds are portioned off by the four student councils (Columbia College, School of Engineering, Barnard and General Studies) into the student clubs and the radio station.

Historically F@CU has been criticized for being too opaque - hundreds of thousands of dollars of student fees are directed to student groups with no way for students to learn more about either the mechanics of the allocation process or visibility into the actual process itself in action. The changes made today included two parts. The first was to produce a transcription of the entire 13 hour meeting with speakers given attribution by title. Attribution by title emphasizes that student government leaders going on the record are doing so on behalf of their constituents, not out of their own personal interests. There will be a key to link individual names to titles provided. The second change will be to provide a video of the entire F@CU meeting. The video will be split into sections - one for each governing board making their presentation for funds and one section where the student councils discuss how to allocate funds at the close of the meeting.

One question at the meeting was over general admission of students to the meeting. The argument for student access is clear and obvious - as elected leaders we are allocating their student life fees, why shouldn't students have access? The answer that was arrived at in the meeting was that we, as student council leaders feel there are many drawbacks to having students present, but there are no known benefits to having students present during the deliberation over the allocation of funds. The number one thing on my mind is that I don't want a biased group of students to appear and put pressure on myself and the other student council leaders as we all search for the right way to allocate funds to all student groups in question. Students *will* still be able to see the proceedings live however, as we will be providing a close-captioned video feed.

The bottom line is that the allocation of your student life fees will be more transparent this year than ever before. This is the start of a project on the General Studies Student Council to really take the lead with financial transparency. When I think about battling for financial aid or housing, I have to think also about the money the council has from students, and how absolutely responsible we need to be with every penny. Look forward to more details soon about how that responsibility to you will be demonstrated. In the meantime, your comments here are welcome and encouraged.

Thanks,

Brody Berg