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FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2014
2014 Sex Survey Tell us all your secrets. surveymonkey.com/s/gazettesex VOLUME 107, ISSUE 60
Students raise questions about donation fund distribution Faculty councils are asking why student donations are paying for things that should already be covered by tuition
DONATION DISAPPOINTMENT. The Social Science Students’ Council recently voted against using the Student Donation Fund to subsidize the salary of a worker in the career services department. Apparently, that practice had been going on for years, raising questions about the way student donations are spent in faculties across Western.
By Iain Boekhoff The student donation fund has come under scrutiny by some students who have found it being used for classroom equipment, instructional materials, academic counselling and building upgrades — things they feel should be covered under tuition. The Social Science Students’ Council rejected a motion two weeks ago that requested $38,000 for continued funding of a parttime career practitioner’s salary — something which an overwhelming majority of council thought should be covered under ancillary fees already paid to the university for that very purpose. Students from every faculty pay an ancillary fee for career counselling which is provided by the university through the Student Success Centre. “[Career counselling] has been operating independently of the Western Student Services Centre Career Services for I think seven years now, and they’ve been requesting funding from us for at least the past four years, and obviously that’s a little out of the scope of what we want that money to be going towards right now,” said Jack Litchfield, Social Science senator. The student donation fund, which is a voluntary fee, is paid by most students for the purpose of improving the experience of students within each faculty, by providing funding for student-led academic activities and extracurricular activities. The fee is between $30 and $100 depending on the faculty, and students have the opportunity to opt out of it. According to the Social Science dean’s website, the fund was started by the SSSC and its purpose “was to provide funds to the Faculty for the
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support of undergraduate students that would otherwise be unavailable to Social Science students.” However, there are concerns among student leaders that the fund is being used for things that are supposed to be funded by tuition — not student donation money. Financial statements provided to The Gazette show that in the past four years, the SSSC donation fund has been used to pay for, among other things, classroom computers and media projectors, DVDs for classroom use, an emergency phone, projector replacement light bulbs and building upgrades to Lawson Hall. Last year, a $100,000 donation was made to academic counselling. “The student donation fund is a non-compulsory fee that is added onto your tuition that faculty student councils ask for,” said Sam Krishnapillai, vice-president internal for the University Students’ Council. “So the money varies in the amount from faculty to faculty but the money is supposed to be used for student initiatives.” Brian Timney, dean of Social Science, differed in the view of what the fund was intended for. He said the fund was created in 1996 following budget cuts from the Ontario government, and the money collected from students was used exclusively to fund necessary things the departments within social science needed, which included classroom equipment. He said there has been an evolution by the SSSC over the years towards using the fund, which totals just over $300,000 a year, for more student initiatives and events like club gatherings, student department publications, speakers and even music concerts.
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“The intent of that was to provide funding to departments they would otherwise be unable to get,” Timney said. “From the beginning this was a student-administered fund. Our role in this is accountability.” This year is the first year the request for a salaried worker went before the full council. In the previous four years that it was funded by the student donation fund, it only went to the levy committee. It was unanimous among SSSC members that the salary for the career services worker that was paid for by the donation fund was
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inappropriate in principle, but they differed on what should be done to deal with it. Council members, like Litchfield, thought that funding should stop or at the very least include a commitment from the dean to move the burden from students to the faculty. “From the start this was not in the best interest of not just Social Science students, but students at large as well,” Litchfield said. “If we are setting a precedent of capitulating on these kind of requests — paying salaries, allocating ancillary fees to long-term projects without guarantees that we will be weaning off of them — that sets a terrible precedent.” Council executives, like SSSC president Lisa Le Nguyen and vice-president finance Marchael Cunanan, thought that without the funding, students would lose out on an important service, and it would be against their mandate to cut off funding now after supporting it for the past four years. Both Le Nguyen and Cunanan voted in favour of funding the salary. “So how I see it, is why can’t we fund someone’s salary which brings so much value to students?” Le Nguyen said. “I would never vote for something or be for something if it wasn’t something that was in the best interest of my constituents.” Timney said he has been focused on getting funding for career counselling because it is an issue that consistently comes up from the departments. He said every year the council is different and he is using his right to ask for it, even if one year council decides not to fund it.
“Over the last five years, this was my own plan, if you like, was to aid with career services,” Timney said. “Career services belongs to the Student Services Centre, but there was always a huge demand for that and we decided that as a faculty we would provide some service.” The divide between what the fund was originally intended for and what student representatives believe it should be used for is compounded by the fact that there are no clear guidelines from the university or the USC on how the faculty councils should administer and allocate the funds. Krishnapillai said she has been working with faculty councils and Western’s vice-provost academic programs and students, John Doerksen, to try to get a clearer definition of what the student donation fund should be used for and to try to create standard practices for all faculties to avoid situations where the money is going to where students don’t want it to go. “I think that because there isn’t really any sort of guidelines to go along with the student fee, it’s a very difficult position for both students and the deans,” Krishnapillai said. The way the money is administered may have an important impact on how student councils receive applications for funding and choose which projects to fund. The Arts and Humanities Students’ Council, for example, have explicit control of half of the money from their fund, with the other half going to the faculty for their needs. They then have full authority over receiving and handling requests, with an advisory >> see SSSC pg.2
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