Editor's note: The referendum vote takes place every two years and will next take place during the 2014-15 academic year.
Author's note: Let me preface this by saying this is not intended to sway opinion, but to merely get you thinking about the current situation with SA at our beloved university.
With what appears to be a looming election for a new SA president (with a practically inevitable impeachment of Nick Johns) and the annual voting process in which undergrads decide whether or not to pass the mandatory student activity fee, it seems like a just time to debate the need for the $94.75 price tag per student, which adds up to about a $3.6 million annual budget for SA. Before I get into details, we must first accept the fact the SA has to look over a lot for our school; practically every club/organization is affiliated with SA. It plays a huge role in the Distinguished Speaker Series, singlehandedly runs Fall Fest, Spring Fest and any other mini concerts it puts on, not to mention all the students they employ.
However, in light of recent allegations and accusations (see the past few publications of The Spectrum), SA has been going under a lot of fire due to the misguided judgment of President Nick Johns and the extremely delayed announcement of Fall Fest. But is that the only heat they should be getting from the student body? SA's e-board, known as the Spirit Party from election time last year, promised transparency as part of its "TIE" platform, and it appears as if they have done the complete opposite.
Now I pay my activity fee and participate enough on campus to get my money's worth, but I still would like to know where that $3.6 million is going. The SA website has revamped and the entire budget can be found online under "General ledger" (that is as long as it remains updated.) This is a good start, but the fact remains that we, as students, are allowing an extremely large sum of money to be entrusted to a select few, and who is to say they are spending it in the wisest fashion?
Let's talk about food, for an example. Everyone needs it, especially broke college kids. During the opening week of school, it seems like every club holds a general meeting to try and get new members, which is great! In every single one of these advertisements, I see "Free Food!" or "Free Pizza!" advertised along with it. Now I have gone to my share of these introductory meetings and have never seen one where the correct amount of food has been provided - either far too much or far too little.
After briefly searching through the general ledger, I have found clubs spend anywhere from $100 to $500 on food for these meetings and events. The American Institute of Chemical Engineers spent $110 on pizza and pop for its first meeting, the Asian American Student Union spent $324.62 on its first general meeting and the Black Student Union spent $500 for its Welcome Back BBQ, just to name a few.
Let's do some math. There are over 130 SA clubs on campus according to its website, so let's say 130 to start. Now let's assume half of these clubs host a general body meeting (probably more) at the start of the semester and spend $100 on food. Now I have participated in enough events to know that most times all of the food does not get eaten and ultimately gets thrown away, so let's say 10 percent of this food goes uneaten. That means $650 worth of food is thrown out, which means almost seven students' activity fees were spent on thrown-out food. This might be a little over the top, but the point here is that I truly believe that the budget of SA needs to be revaluated. In real life corporations, budget cuts are things that happen annually, but the best companies do not crumble, they push through and learn to work with less money all the while providing the same services.
Why should our SA be any different? Should we expect anything less than consistent improvement?
Going further into detail about wasted money, did you know SA has a staff orientation? I did not realize this, but I guess it makes sense that they should meet on campus before school starts to get properly trained. Oh, what's that? They do not have orientation on campus? Where else would they have it? Niagara Falls, Canada. Yep. We as students paid for an international orientation for the SA staff this year. Not only that, but since Obama was on campus during this orientation, SA decided to drive to Canada, drive back to allow the staff to see Obama and then drive back to Canada to finish orientation. I am sure a couple students' mandatory fees were spent on that gas mileage.
Well, at least the staff got trained, right? Well, as one of my good friends, who is a higher-up in SA, said of their weekend, excuse me 'orientation,' in Canada was filled with "expensive, crazy nights and rough mornings" [paraphrased]. I guess this orientation boded well for the upcoming year with our productive SA President Nick Johns.
It became widely known that Johns got an all-expenses paid trip and sideline passes to see the No. 2 ranked college football team, Ohio State University, play on UB's home field during the Bulls' home opener, courtesy of UB Athletics. (Oh, the Bulls were playing, too.) I would have liked those tickets and I am sure a large portion of the student body would have, too, but since we cannot all be SA president and we cannot all sign $30,000 deals with UB Athletics, I guess we do not get those expensive tickets free-of-charge.
"Now surely, our own SA President would not have missed the SA Club Orientation, perhaps SA's biggest tie-in to everyday campus life, right?" Oh right, he was in Columbus, Ohio ... "Well, he cannot be all that bad. I mean, we have to pay Nick Johns $12,000 a year through our activity fee."
Well, he has been accused of harassing, perhaps sexually, SA Chief-of-Staff Jennifer Merckel ... And lying about his summertime hours in the SA office, yet still getting paid ... And has accumulated 2,000 student signatures to be impeached according to the latest figures in Friday's Spectrum ... So Nick Johns has apparently done a hell of a lot in three weeks and yet I have not seen anything productive from SA. Strange.
This should lead to the justifiable impeachment of Johns, which will in turn lead to a new president through a special election, which thus leads to my final point. Last year's SA election for e-board rounded up to an astounding 14 percent of undergrads to vote - 14 percent to vote for the representation the entire student body.
Now for you freshmen who have not been around for an election, the process is not a popularity contest as in high school. It is far, far worse.
It consists of friends of the nominees and the nominees themselves bombarding you in the Student Union pleading you to vote for them. I tried as hard as I could to find qualifications to be elected SA president, vice president or treasurer, but found nada. So I guess as long as you are motivated enough to be president, you will succeed in doing so! That is, motivated enough to persuade enough freshmen to vote for you.
Amidst this year's scandals and the infamous $300,000 fiasco of two years ago (look it up if you are unaware) SA is in desperate need of serious improvement and you, as a student of SUNY Buffalo, have the power to declare your voice for such change.
According to the SA website, the referendum vote for the mandatory student activity fee took place last year, which means that price is locked for four school years. Considering the only people who usually vote in this are members of SA clubs who desperately need their $100 pizzas, the fee always passes in a landslide. I mean, it sure is fair that about 10 percent of the student body ends up deciding if I have to pay $94.75 or not. I am not saying that we should not have a mandatory activity fee; I think it is vital we do. However, I think to prove to SA that we, undergrads, are sick of their utter bulls***. We need to send them a message, and perhaps docking their budget 5 to 10 percent will do so.
Sadly, the next referendum vote won't take place until the 2016-17 school year as mandated by the SUNY system, unless something radical changes, such as a call for change at Assembly. I hope you take this article with a grain of salt and truly think on your own if you believe your money is being well spent on our Student Association. Based on the recent doings of SA, this $94.75 seems to be the ultimate UB Problem (@UB_Problems), and I truly think it is #TimeForAChange.
John Maher is a sophomore chemical engineering major.
