Last night's Student Services Finance Committee funding decision for the Multicultural Student Coalition was the culmination of years of research and lobbying at all levels of student leadership. While we reiterate our respect for the goals of MCSC and similar coalitions, we find the current trend in the way student organizations are funded alarming.
The process of funding student groups is painfully lacking in oversight, and as budget requests from many student organizations skyrocket, the need for accountability in how they spend their allocated money is even more pressing.
This is not to suggest that student groups do not provide valuable services, or that they should not receive adequate funding. Much of MCSC's argument in favor of its request concerned programs used to increase cultural awareness and the inestimably precious intangible of diversity. In the end, however, it sadly came down to money.
If the university continues to fail in recruiting and retaining students of color, student organizations will continue to submit hefty budgets, saying they need to compensate for administrative shortcomings. As a result, a continually servile SSFC will continue to approve, dwindling the student fee coffers already spread thin.
The conclusion is thus: Our important discussions regarding campus and cultural climate will be reduced year after year to issues of money and funding. The focus will not be on relations between different campus groups and how to bring them together; the rhetoric will deal with the divisions in the funding process.
It doesn't have to be this way. Obviously, university administrators need to step up their efforts with Plan 2008 and strengthen lobbying in the state Legislature for more funding at all levels of education. In addition, relative to the methods by which student organizations are funded here at UW-Madison, there should be more accountability and oversight after the appropriating is done.
The voracious convictions of most student organizations are unquestionable. What is truly alarming, however, is that there is no method by which SSFC members can check up on whether the money they approved is being spent appropriately'or at all. As it stands, SSFC has no substantive ability to audit organizations to see if they are going about their business properly.
Much re-evaluation will be required to fix this broken process, and more specifically, this broken system. Student groups should not be made to compensate for the shortcomings of administrators, but should also not be given a blank check.
