USG’s Student Activity Fee Referendum: What it is, What Happened, and What is Next
Words by Matthew Romano
Illustrations by Katie Herchenroeder
On the night of Thursday, February 28, 37 club leadersgathered at the office of the Undergraduate Student Government in NAC 1/110 foran emergency referendum. Besides free food, these 37 club leaders were drivenby one lustrous and potentially groundbreaking incentive: increased USG fundingfor their respective student clubs.
There are approximately 200 student clubs and organizationson campus reliant on the funding from CCNY’s Undergraduate Student Governmentin order to run their club successfully, plan and execute exciting campus widesocial events, and serve the portion of the student body which they represent.
With the loss of AEC (Auxiliary Enterprise Corporation)funding and the lack of an earmarked allocation of the USG budget onlyaccessible by student clubs and organizations, student clubs have been forcedto make ends meet in any way possible. One such club leader is Annisaa Sularno,President of the Teachers of Tomorrow club, who mentioned, with respect to theclub’s current budget, “We only get around $500, it was decreased from $1000 to$500.” Further, Hannah Towfiek cited her experience as a club leader andrepresentative on the finance committee “It’s so sad to see clubs like [MuslimStudent Organization] or you have clubs like [Young Democratic Socialists ofAmerica], big clubs that do big things on campus and they’’re coming to youbegging you for a couple hundred dollars, and as were administering this moneyit’s like “ok, you can have $700 dollars.”
USG understood this situation and devised a prospectivesolution – in the form of a proposal - to alleviate these budgetary constraintswhile also negotiating their own debt.
First, it’s important to take note of the statistics andcrunched numbers on which the proposition was founded. Under such, the roughly12,000 undergrad students would pay $14 more in Student Activity Fees per year.This makes for about $168,000 in SAF, earmarked at $1,300 for each of the 130registered clubs on campus – money devoid of any possible interference orintense oversight. Simple enough, right? It would seem so, but it raises thequestion as to why such a movement has not gone into action before and why theinitial idea was only floated around over this past winter break?
Frantzy Luzincourt, vice president of student affairs, alongwith Towfiek, who are spearheading this referendum, share their thoughts on thecurrent state of affairs as it relates to the current budget, the exigence ofthis movement, and some of the next-steps for USG and the campus community.
Luzincourt cedes that the state of CCNY’s current SAF isoutdated and in dire straits: “Hannah and I both have the privilege ofrepresenting City College at the University Student Senate for the CUNY widelevel so, we see how other schools operate and we’re at the lower end yet, we’rethe first, the other CUNY schools wouldn’t exist without us.” This new visionhopes to return to when clubs would receive $1,800 to $2,000 a year, based onarchived budget pamphlets from 2011. It is this perspective that opened thefloodgates for change to occur, a change that they hoped would serve as therising tide to lift all club boats.
The impact and wide-reaching benefits the referendum would have had on student clubs and organizations is pretty obvious. This impact noted, the referendum entails a $14 per year tuition hike for all students, whether or not they are affiliated with a student club. How does one grapple with this seeming contradiction between the interests and points of importance for this population of students and those that would seem to benefit the most from such a referendum? Luzincourt provides an answer to this, “Indirectly, you’re still affected by it… all these little resources that you take part of every time that you don’t really notice because it’s so consistent, those all come from Student Activity Fees.”
He goes on to cite some of these resources and events, namely: Student Life’s Welcome Back Event, Free HIV testing, yoga classes, WCCR, and even, full disclosure, The Campus, all of which provide services to the student-wide population with the help of the portions of the USG budget which they are allocated. Herein lies the heart of the matter – the exigence – CCNY will look very different if the school shifts the amount of SAF.
The official deadline, by which USGhad to produce at least 2000 signatures from the CCNY student population insupport of this petition, was Thursday, March 14 at 8pm. In advance of the deadline;however, Luzincourt shared the dire status of the referendum based on the numberof signatures that had been received by then. At the point of conversation, USGhad only received 900 out of the 2000 minimum signatures needed for thereferendum to go through.
Alas, USG’s petition did not breaksuch ground as they never received the signatures needed. The effects of thiscan be expected to continue to reverberate across campus. As Towfiek iterated,“Clubs aren’t active because they don’t have the funds to be active.” Thereexists an interesting dichotomy in the club community here at City Collegebetween the largest, most popular clubs with the largest-scale events andbiggest presence, and the smaller ones that persevere despite low budgets andstudent populations. In the failure of this referendum, the dichotomy widens.
Despite this, Luzincourt promisedthat USG will not let up so long as the campus community doesn’t. With his andTowfiek’s tenure as representatives expected to continue, the fight willcontinue. Luzincourt offered advice to everyone, whether they’re involved in aclub or not, a senior or a freshman, a small or large club: “Students have totap in, be aware of what’s going on, and get involved as soon as they can. Thefight for more funding is not going to be easy and its definitely not going tojust stop at banging on the VP of finances door.”
