With spring break behind us, midterms upon us, and campus life pressing in all around us once again, students who led and participated in service and immersion trips over spring break may find themselves breathing sighs of relief.
No more bake sales, no more spaghetti dinners, no more point drives or letter-writing campaigns or pleading for a few more dollars to pay for those plane tickets. All that remains now, hopefully, are new relationships and reflections on a challenging and inspiring week.
But in my experience, and despite the relief I felt when all the students on my trip were safely back on solid ground at Logan, the afterglow of immersion in a new and fascinating community is somewhat tainted by some of the pre-trip insight I gained into my own community; namely, when I had the opportunity to appeal to the UGBC Senate for funding.
For those of you who have never had the "pleasure" of this particular opportunity, I will explain. The Senate appropriates funds to various campus trips and organizations: To appeal for funding, the leaders of a trip or organization must appear at a Senate meeting, describe their endeavor, provide a detailed record of their finances, and answer any questions. Pretty straightforward.
My co-leader and I were slated to appear the week before spring break, and we came to play: mission statements, budget spreadsheets, I had even ironed the sweater I was wearing.
We entered the conference room in 21 Campanella Way and were faced with a collection of our peers, seated around a long table, animatedly discussing the happenings and hangovers of the previous weekend. Students just like us.
The meeting came to order and we were first on the agenda. It all started out reasonably enough - I explained the history of the trip, my co-leader handed around a copy of our finances for each senator and explained our aggressive fundraising efforts and our need for Senate funding. Then it was time for questions.
A few routine questions about the importance of the trip served as a deceiving prelude to the interrogation, or, rather, the performance, that followed.
You leave Saturday, one senator pointed out (it was Wednesday night). You still have a lot of money to raise - what happens if you don't raise it?
Something about her tone made me feel embarrassed and incredibly guilty, like I had overdrawn my bank account to buy shoes instead of paying the electric bill.
We explained that we had met all of our upfront costs, but what remained was the money we gave to the community we would be visiting, to account for our room, board, and a donation. We could send this check after the trip, we explained with smiles we hoped would make everything alright, but it needed to get sent nonetheless.
From the head of the table a senator laughed.
Are they going to charge you interest? he asked with a smirk.
It was at this point I realized that I had entered the conference room that night with the wrong outlook. I was not appealing to the better natures of Boston College students to share a little bit of the money for a worthy cause - money that the school I pay tuition to gives them to play with. We were playing politics, and from his position of honor and importance at the head of a table in a conference room in 21 Campanella Way, a BC student had just asked me if the community we were going to visit - a community where, just for the sake of academics, the median household income for six to eight people is $28,889 - was going to charge us interest.
At what point during this process had our roles changed from fellow student leaders to all-powerful money lenders and irresponsible tenants? I felt as if I had just spent my paycheck at a bar instead of paying my rent.
At this point, one thing should be made clear: I am not writing this to complain about the $250 the Senate deigned to allocate to our trip at the end of this song-and-dance routine. I understand that there's only just so much money to go around, and despite that we were afforded half or less than half of what many of the other trips that appeal for funding receive, I am not losing sleep over the amount of our Senate allocation.
Certainly not every senator present at this meeting contributed to the way we were made to feel that night. But for the greater part, those who had something to say expressed it with an unchecked hubris and condescension that I am saddened and disappointed to believe exists within one of our student organizations, especially one which, according to its mission statement, is elected "to serve as representatives of the student body," and is charged with the responsibility of arbitrating the power of the purse-strings.
BC students can travel to the four corners of the globe in search of heightened awareness and social justice. They can volunteer in Boston and run to end diseases. They can become politically active, serve as volunteers in the campaigns of presidential candidates, and work to amplify the national call for change in leadership.
BC students can change the world. Maybe then they can change the conference room.
Kathryn Dill is a Heights staff columnist. She welcomes comments at kdill@bcheights.com.
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