The Campus Women's Center has been on a bit of an odyssey of late. Ever since they were denied eligibility for General Student Service Funds (better known as that pool of money where a couple bucks of your segregated fees go every semester), the CWC has gone through a seemingly endless series of appeals and hearings in an attempt to gain funding for the 2010-'11 school year.
The Student Services Finance Committee dealt the women's center its latest blow when it denied the CWC's request for a redecision last Thursday. But somehow the organization still intends to keep pushing forward, as CWC Outreach Chair Yun-Jung Kim confirmed that the group intends to file yet another appeal of an SSFC decision.
I have a better suggestion: They should just give up.
It's not that the CWC doesn't pursue noble goals. It provides several worthwhile and very valuable services to the campus community, including support counseling and Kids Night Out for children of student parents. Nobody is going to fault the CWC for its mission. It is the execution that the group has sorely been lacking.
When it sent in its original application to SSFC, the CWC showed that its records were woefully inadequate. One of the chief requirements to achieve GSSF funding is that a group dedicate at least half of its time to services that directly serve students. The numbers the CWC provided did not do this at all. The figures it presented were incredibly vague, with time commitments listed as ""~1/2"" of an employee's time, or other similar amounts. Alberto Gonzales kept better records of his activities.
But even while using this incredibly vague and rather lazy cataloging system, the CWC couldn't manage to get above the 50-percent threshold mandated by SSFC, at least after one of its main services, the Kids Night Out, was shown to not meet the definition of an official ""student service.""
This is not a matter of SSFC subjectively interpreting the data and deciding on a whim that the CWC does not deserve funding. By the CWC's own numbers, it did not meet the 50-percent criterion. The CWC Finance Coordinator Zorian Lasowsky confirmed as much when he admitted Kids Night Out does not meet SSFC's standards for a direct service to students. The blame here lies solely on the CWC leadership for failing to meet SSFC standards, which they should have known inside and out. Lasowsky in particular should have been able to craft a better application, considering he is a former member of SSFC. In addition, other group leaders like Program Coordinator Tina Treviño-Murphy should have thought ahead and better planned out the division of hours for each CWC employee.
In the almost two months that have passed since the original SSFC decision, the CWC has provided numerous excuses for its poor application. The organization attempted to send revised numbers to SSFC, after suddenly discovering more time was spent on direct student services. Obviously, it is more than a little suspicious that the CWC only discovered these new numbers after getting denied funding.
After SSFC denied the CWC's request to resubmit these new numbers, the CWC went to the Student Judiciary claiming SSFC denied it improperly, claiming various SSFC members were confused and not properly informed regarding the women's centers eligibility. Never- mind that any confusion that resulted from the CWC's presentation was probably a product of its own vague numbers that its members presented. Regardless, in the end there is very little to be confused about.
The CWC did not meet the criteria. Its own application shows this. End of story. Own up to your mistakes and try to continue your mission through more productive means.
Continuing to appeal the decision just delays the inevitable and prevents the CWC from seeking funding from other venues. I don't want to see the CWC go under. With some new leadership and some slight alterations to its day-to-day operations, the organization should have little trouble getting funding next year. The only roadblock would be securing funding for the meantime, which the CWC simply isn't going to do if it focuses all of its efforts on appeal after appeal. Members should be applying for grants, holding fundraisers, selling their plasma en masse—anything to try and get by for a couple semesters.
The CWC is a truly valuable campus organization, but it still needs to operate by the standards all other organizations do. Hopefully the group's leadership will regroup next year and do their jobs properly so the CWC can go back to providing the services this campus deserves.
Todd Stevens is a junior majoring in history and psychology. We welcome all feedback. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
