Should we be forced to provide life support for Stanford's student groups?
Yesterday, Otis Reid argued on this blog that the significant increase in Special Fees refunds this year is a problem caused in part by “the Stanford Conservative Society’s irresponsible flyering campaign.” He said,
“The purpose of the Special Fees refund process is, in my view, to allow students to punish groups with which they disagree.”
I fundamentally disagree with this. The purpose of the Special Fees refund process is to allow students to maintain control of whether and on what they spend their money. That individual control is a fundamental principle on which this nation was founded and with which we are able to maintain our liberty. It is not that students “punish groups with which they disagree” through the refund process. Rather, students choose to gift money to those groups they wish to support.
However, the core problem with the Special Fees process is that it is reversed in such a way that it makes students’ liberty highly susceptible to violation. The process rips from students’ accounts (or accounts of parents who gift money to their children) the “fees” to which the student groups are not automatically entitled. The students must find out about this secret way to reclaim what they never gifted in the first place. And they must remember to do it before a deadline.
Therefore, what the Stanford Conservative Society did in publicizing the refund process was not irresponsible. It provided information that many students did not have before. It provided the information that allowed them to make informed decisions about whether they wanted to reclaim their taken money. No one made them type in a refund URL, select specific organizations from which they could reclaim their ill-taken goods, or decide how much they would reclaim. The Conservative Society merely ensured that students knew they had more financial options than just the one.
And the students who chose to reclaim all of their money did not “abuse the refund” as Otis stated. One can abuse a privilege, but one cannot abuse an inalienable right.
Honestly, a better protection of individual rights would be to just have students select whether they would like to donate money to a group, any group, before any money is ever taken from them. Let’s see which organizations could manage to convince students that they were worthy enough of existing here on campus. This would force more accountability from student groups and if some groups were to fall by the wayside, then so be it.
And finally, Otis stated,
“The existence of special fees groups is a public good on the Stanford campus and it is unacceptable to let a small number of freeriders jeopardize their existence.”
Now let’s be real, these organizations are not all public goods. They could be gone today and most wouldn’t really miss them. They may provide services that directly benefits this campus, but they may not. And they can reject service to someone who does not wish to donate to them. That’s completely fine.
So why shouldn’t one “jeopardize their existence” if that is the choice one chooses to make. If the individual would rather spend that money on something other than groups, any or all groups, that receive Special Fees, then that is his prerogative and no one else’s. If the groups are irresponsible, act against and individual’s personal views, are ineffective, or don’t benefit me or Stanford, why should that individual be forced to keep the groups on life support. I say that I have no problem just pulling the plug.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
A interesting perspective on an important issue. However, I think comparing refunding special fees money to a “fundamental principle on which this nation was founded” is overly dramatic. By this logic, Americans should be able to directly opt out of ways the government spends its tax dollars. For example, one individual does not like that a portion of his income tax goes towards welfare payments, so he fills out an online form refunding all of his income tax that goes toward welfare payments. Pretty soon, a trend starts where a significant percentage of Americans ask for refunds.
Like our tax dollars, our special fees money is not money that should be spent only on groups or issues that we support or find important, but groups and issues supported by our elected officials (in this case the ASSU). Like Otis said, I understand the importance of receiving a refund of money that goes towards a student group you disagree with, but refunding special fees money is far from a fundamental right.
However, if we are to put our trust in the ASSU to conduct oversight over funding student groups, then we must expect more of them. Budgets and expenditures should be analyzed based on how they affect groups of students and how they improve or fulfill a need at Stanford. This will make more work for the ASSU, but for most students, this is far and away the most important issue they deal with. A vast majority of students at Stanford are involved in a student group that receives special fees money, it is important that the ASSU get this issue right.
“Now let’s be real, these organizations are not all public goods. They could be gone today and most wouldn’t really miss them. They may provide services that directly benefits this campus, but they may not.”
I fundamentally disagree with this assessment. What would our campus be like without all of these student groups? Honestly, it would be terrible. While I do not disagree that we could lose a few of these groups and be ok, I firmly believe that losing 85% of the groups on campus (the average refund rate) would destroy the dynamic of this campus. I do not see how you can disagree with this assessment. If we had no Mock Trial, no club sports, no Stanford in Government, would Stanford attract the same caliber of student? I don’t think so and I’m willing to pay $119 per quarter to assure that.
To Peter: Special Fees are comparable to governmental taxes in that the revenue is quite often distributed in ways that are undesirable to the people who own that money. Through elections, people can work to reclaim control of those funds that they believe are improperly allocated. Indeed, I believe that will become quite apparent in the 2010 election season.
My calling an individual’s right to control how his money is spent a “fundamental principle on which this nation was founded” is not “overly dramatic.” Fundamental principles stand regardless of the scale on which they are being maintained or violated. My right is my right, and no individual or group of individuals can snatch it away.
You said, “Like our tax dollars, our special fees money is not money that should be spent only on groups or issues that we support or find important, but groups and issues supported by our elected officials (in this case the ASSU).” But just as the groups are not entitled to students’ money, so too are elected officials not entitled to decide for us how that money is spent. They represent us, and they must be beholden to us, their constituents. If I must bypass them by taking my refund, full or not, I will do that.
To Otis: If these groups want to survive they can go to the people like you who are willing to support them. Each year, they can make a pitch to the student body about why prevent Stanford from sliding into a bleak and barren academic milieu.
I’m not in the business of giving meaningless charity. I want to see it going towards something. I’m not going to support and incentivize the breeding of mediocrity. I don’t do it in my personal life and I’m not going to do it in my university’s social realm either.
I think Autumn’s got some great points, but what I want to push back on is the idea that refunding special fees gives individuals control over what they spend their own money on. This point is valid if students actively choose which groups to refund from, but I don’t think it holds when students mass refund from every single group, like the Conservative Society advertisement appears to encourage. And that’s the kicker – it’s the number of students asking for all of their refunds back that’s really risen this quarter. I sure hope no one from Conservative Society ever needs legal advice.
What do you think, Autumn? Is there a difference between people refunding all of their fees versus selectively choosing which groups to refund from?
I think there are several dimensions to this problem.
On one hand, a lot of students have been “going for broke” on the refunds by asking for almost all their money. In a sense, Otis is right about the free rider problem. Somebody who demands a refund from the Progressive or the Daily cannot be easily prevented from grabbing free copies of either publication.
But on the other hand, it’s difficult to argue that the special fees system has always conducted itself responsibly. Year after year, the student body votes in lockstep to dole out special fees to virtually every group on the ballot. Although some of these groups genuinely help to enrich the Stanford community, a lot of groups tend to benefit only a small number of students.
The solution, then is that the reforming the student refund system must go hand-in-hand with reform of the special fees system. We have a situation where too many students vote lockstep to approve every single spending measure, and this contributes to a situation where there are a lot of unhappy students who go for broke on and ask for 80+% on their refunds.
Its useful to look at scale:
Tuition+Room+Board+Telecommunications fees (etc) + Special Fees: ~$16,600 (not counting the Health insurance cost if you don’t have your own) per quarter. Special Fees is $119 this quarter. That’s about .7% of the total cost of a quarters’ experience at Stanford.
Think about all the activities that make up your life at Stanford. The academic life makes up an important part and is the main reason to be here ~ $12,000 in tuition. There’s the residential life, all the amenities, the fast internet, etc. ~ $4,000 (give or take depend on where you live).
Now if all we did were eat sleep and study, this would all make sense. But part of the draw of going to a place like Stanford is getting to attend a school with lots of other awesome people who do awesome extracurricular things. $119 is a marginal amount to pay to enjoy the rich student culture.
This culture of student groups and activities – isn’t even funded entirely from special fees – sometimes it’s from alumni through TSF, and I think the ASSU gives out money through some process, so maybe we’re already paying a bit more through our tuition (I don’t know the details). There are probably some other sources.
Anyways – one other point: tuition gets aggregated into a pot that pays for academics in parts of the university large numbers of students never use. Some departments probably need a lot more money to function than others. In other words, if we paid tuition based on the proportional amount of the cost of academics each of us uses, some people (perhaps some techies who use expensive labs) would have to pay a lot more compared to others (maybe an english major).
But it doesn’t work that way – we all pitch in to help fund the Stanford academic community. And really, we’re spoiled by all the rich alumni who have donated boatloads that actually makes this place stupidly nice. We frankly owe more than $119.
Tim, I’d say that it really is about individual control of his own money whether that individual refunds all of the money, some of the money, or none of the money. That $119 is $119 that I could send back to my family. That’s a credit card payment, that’s a week of groceries, that’s 2 new winter coats.
If I’d rather not give $119 to the Special Fees system because there is a higher priority, I believe that is my choice. We have no idea why students choose to reclaim their money, but it really is none of our business. Whether they are protesting how individual groups are run, whether they are diverting all or part of those funds to more worthy sources, or whether they want to spend it on something far less worthy, it must exist solely within the realm of individual choice. Their private motivations are their private motivations.
Chris is right on point with lock-step voting, but that mindless voting comes about because of the well-established and well-promoted belief that Special Fees are an entitlement.
When a film organization’s member came to my door last year, he asked me whether I’d support his group receiving Special Fees. I asked him what his group had done in the past year. He said that they’d hosted a film screening. I told him I hadn’t seen any flyers whatsoever for the screening, that it hadn’t been marketed properly, and that the organization was ineffective. He proceeded to ask me why I had to be so difficult mean. I told him his group didn’t deserve the my support and I did not vote for its Special Fees bid. That he expected me to do it simply because it’s the easy and nice thing to do is ridiculous.
So Lucas, I said this in an earlier post, “Fundamental principles stand regardless of the scale on which they are being maintained or violated. My right is my right, and no individual or group of individuals can snatch it away.” I really do believe that whether the Special Fees were .7% or 1% or 10% or more of the total cost of attendance here, then the issue is fundamentally the same.
But practically speaking, I agree with you that we do more than eat, sleep, and study here. For those groups that contribute to the community to make it more vibrant, I believe they’ll find a group of students who support their existence. If $119 is such a pittance and the groups are so crucial, then they should have no problem openly making the claim that they do benefit Stanford student life.
Honestly, my ideal system would have student groups, research groups, and departments effectively competing for all forms of funding, not only Special Fees for student groups. These organs would necessarily be leaner, stronger, and more accountable to the people keeping them alive.
You did bring up the academic departments that are pretty useless to the community overall bust still receive. In a way, these departments already exist within the type of system I’ve proposed. The departments that receive the most funding are those that generate the most news, produce the best research, bring in the brightest minds. These departments are the ones attracting the research talent and best students to Stanford, so they are the ones allowing the University to thrive. Those that generate little interest here on campus or off it are slowly dying because they are receiving less support. That is life, but we’re just too sheltered within this pristine microcosm of a false ideal.
Autumn, these groups indeed “have no problem openly making the claim that they do benefit Stanford student life.” Each year they put themselves on the ballot and are approved. Your argument that each group should have to raise money individually is completely impractical. As Tim said, and as I emphasized in my article, the fact that most refunds are for an extremely large percentage of groups shows that this is a free-rider issue, not a expression of freedom.
And yet the core question remains: Who would actually pay for the services these groups provide?
Free riders use or benefit from a good or service, don’t pay to use it, and can’t be prevented from using it. Practicality has become an excuse for laziness and ineptitude. It is not just the case here at Stanford. It is true of many elite institutions (academic and otherwise) that feel it necessary to avoid ever working towards the core meaning of an issue.
I stand by my assertion that any reclaiming of one’s own property is inherently an expression of freedom. Let the groups worry about money. If these groups want the money they should work for it, not just have it doled out to them through a system that is purposely masked in opaque red tape.
Autumn, what do you mean by “practicality has become an excuse for laziness and ineptitude”?
Certainly, you’re not implying that some of our students are lazy or inept, right?
Yes, absolutely. I am saying that some of our students are lazy and/or inept, as is the root of the Special Fees system. Otis offered that my proposal to put individual choice at the front end of the process instead of the back end is “completely impractical.”
Not giving individuals that choice of whether they want to donate to any, all, or no groups is lazy and indicates a high level of ineptitude on the parts of those running the system. And it merely promotes the continued support of lazy and inept student group organizers who continue to run inefficient and ineffective groups but still get Special Fees. Not all are lazy and/or inept, but many are.
That’s a very blanket and bold statement for you to make. Any solutions to this problem? The ASSU could use your sage advice.
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