Each year, the UGBC is given 50 percent of each student's activities fee. After elections are held, the incoming president and vice president sit down and decide how to allocate what typically amounts to roughly $500,000.
The Senate, as specified by the UGBC constitution, is entitled to 4 percent of that budget. This money, lest we forget, does not grow on trees. Therefore, with very limited money for so many students, we try to do our best to allocate our budget to events, programs, and groups that benefit the largest amount of Boston College students.
Service trips, as we all know, are a major part of the BC culture. The issue with funding them, however, is that service trips cater to a small portion of our total community.
Many students frequently criticize the UGBC for "not doing anything" on behalf of the entire student body. Thus, when a service trip comes in to ask us for funds so that 15 to 20 students can go to Latin America, most of us are left wondering if there is not something better we could be doing for the entire student body.
Therefore, senators must be highly inquisitive in order to best serve the needs of the student body as a whole, while still supporting the honorable and commendable activities of a dedicated few.
Over the course of this year, the Senate has seen presentations by service trips that were well-prepared and by others that were not so well-prepared. Some come in with detailed budgets outlining their current cash and additional funds needed. Others have no budget details whatsoever.
As the elected representatives of the student body, we have every right to ask tough questions of all those who come before us looking for a slice of the communal pie.
When a group comes before the Senate looking for money four days before they are supposed to leave, it seems only fair that a senator would ask them what their course of action would be should we deny them their funding request.
What Ms. Dill ("Smugness out of place in Senate," March 13) and other students need to understand is that because money is scarce and demands are high, we in the Senate try to do our best to allocate what little we do have as efficiently as possible. Her group, after all, did get money, and despite numerous votes in the negative, we have not turned down a single service trip funding request this year (regardless of how poorly prepared some of them were for their presentation).
It should be noted that Ms. Dill's group has received not a meager amount of funding from the Senate, but a great deal of dollars this year. A total of $1,250 has been appropriated to BC-related endeavors with the Jemez tribe. This is almost triple what the Senate typically allocates to service trips. Ms. Dill portrays the Senate as being miserly toward her when, in fact, just the opposite is true.
These illustrations of past Senate activities aside, the central issue raised in Ms. Dill's column was the way she felt she was being treated. The situational context of the words we speak is paramount to ascertaining the full extent of their meaning. The Senate is saddened that Ms. Dill felt as if she was being "interrogated," "embarrassed," or "guilty."
The questions posed by the senators referred to in the column and those she chose to fade into the background, were all appropriate given the nature of any senator's responsibility to the students; those students before them and the thousands more not in attendance. Both questions mentioned in the column, while interpreted negatively by the listener, were directed out of legislative inquisitiveness.
When funding any type of event, the Senate has, should, and will continue to assess the scope, immediacy, and severity of the need presented to it. Both the questions cited and those not mentioned fall under the three critical elements to making an informed allocation of the student body's money.
In asking tough questions and presenting fair scrutiny, the UGBC Senate is not acting smug; it is fulfilling its duties.
Michael Cannella is the Senate director of public affairs and a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences.
2008 Woodie Awards
