Note to SSFC: Keep up the good work
In the past few weeks, I have heard many complaints about this year's SSFC and their decisions to cut funds for MEChA, DES, the Student Labor Center and the UW Infoshop. The groups that have been defunded this year deserved it. Those organizations that pretend to promote diversity, but instead direct obscene hateful language at white students, are merely fostering racial warfare and do not represent the entire campus. Furthermore, any group that spreads literature promoting violence and illegal behavior towards the brave men and women who serve in our nation's police forces are also clearly of no use to the campus community.
SSFC this year does indeed have an agenda'and that agenda is saving low-income students like myself hundreds of thousands of dollars. The spendthrift student politicians of previous years would constantly complain to the state government over tuition increases, while simultaneously granting massive funding increases to students groups with hate-filled liberal agendas, which in turn raised tuition! Unlike those hypocritical student politicians, this year's SSFC is actually doing something positive to lower tuition.
Last spring, the student body sent a clear message to ASM: We do not want arrogant student politicians working to increase our tuition. We are tired of seeing huge sums of money being given to organizations with political agendas, and being told such increases don't really affect us, or that we are too ignorant and misinformed to understand the value of these groups.
SSFC needs to represent all students
I'm new to this campus, so I don't have much clue about how things were done here in the past. But so far, reading about the SSFC has put a bitter taste in my mouth.
To my knowledge, the Student Services Finance Committee has so far denied funding to the UW-Infoshop, MEChA, Student Labor Center, Indigenous Law Students Association, and the State Langdon Neighborhood Association. There may be others that I missed.
In each of these cases, the SSFC gave some murky, nebulous reason for denying funds, such as epresents too small a portion of UW students,"" (ILSA) or ""group objectives overlap with those of other student groups"" (SLNA). Neither of these reasons justifies defunding these groups, especially since doing so effectively keeps these groups from pursuing their goals.
What's worse, members of the SSFC have made it clear that their ""unofficial"" reasons for denying funds are not the same as their official ones. In the case of the UW-Infoshop, for example, one SSFC member voted against funding, saying that the group was ""anti-President.""
This letter is not a plea for the SSFC to restore funding to the groups they denied during this year, though doing that would be a nice start. Instead, this letter is a call to change the structure of the SSFC, to make it directly accountable to students.
No single group should have as much power on UW's campus as the SSFC has. Their ability to permit or deny funds on a seemingly arbitrary basis is disturbing. The SSFC needs to be decentralized, and we students must be able to quickly recall any of our ""leaders."" Until then, the whims of those few will determine the outcomes for the rest of us.
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