Cluster-Blank Column

SGA Wasting Student Activity Funds on Environmentalist Agenda

 

By Jeff Scott

 

Listeners to my radio show will know that, from time to time, I report on examples of government wasting money on frivolous pork projects, usually slipped into a bill by a single member of Congress or in committee without ever having to be mentioned on the floor.  Our young legislators on Mercer University’s own Student Government Association voted last week to give the largest Bear Grant in history to an environmentalist group with a poor history of fiscal discipline to advance their agenda.

 

The Bear Grant that SGA approved, by far the largest of this year’s Bear Grant process, gave Students for Environmental Action over $7,500 in student activity fees for use in this fiscal year.  SGA’s budget shows that they have a total of $40,000 for Bear Grants for all student organizations, so their $7,500 makes up almost 20% of the total Bear Grant allocations.  According to a high-level SGA source, the same organization has been given Bear Grants of a combined $5,000 the last two years and has returned the money to SGA because they did not spend the money.  To make sure that their lack of fiscal discipline did not prevent them from getting the money this year, SEA brought not just their President, as is customary for Bear Grant hearings, but a large group of students wearing green ribbons and even a faculty member, who also happens to be the father of the organization’s President.  They used intimidation by numbers to get their Bear Grant passed for an obscenely large amount.

 

So what is your student activity fee paying for?  They are using $2,000 to bring a speaker to campus.  This is not a horrible proposal; however, they are not using any outside money for any of their proposals.  If a lecture is worth that much money, why not ask for some money from the Environmental Science department, the President’s office, or other sources of money within and outside the University?  Many student organizations host speakers, and use other sources of funding to do so.  Why does SEA think that they are too good to get outside funding?  Is it just that they have a strong sense of entitlement?

 

SEA also feels it necessary to use $850 of student funds for promotional purposes.  Between t-shirts, reusable grocery bags, decorations, and Nalgene bottles, every student should know who SEA is by the end of this semester (assuming they spend the money this year).  They also requested $1,500 for recycling bins, which according to SGA’s minutes are already on campus.  Even that information, which was presented publicly in the Senate by Vice President and Dean of Students Dr. Douglas Pearson, was not enough to encourage SGA to cut their allocation.  Perhaps they were simply intimidated by a bunch of hippies with green ribbons.

 

Probably the most egregious of the allocations are for things that should be the University’s business, not a student organization’s.  You see, SEA wants to do an “energy audit” of Mercer’s campus.  To do so, they need to rent an infrared camera and purchase AC sensors and energy panel clocks.  These items come to a price tag of $1,800.  Add the recycling bins and the $200 for plants and seeds, and SGA gave a student organization $3,500 to do something that the University should be doing.  After all, as a private institution Mercer should be paying attention to the amount of energy used on its own; the University has to pay a power bill.  Why should student activity funds be going towards the business of the University?

 

I would also like to draw attention to a smaller appropriation:  $50 for fluorescent light bulbs.  First of all, it is again the University’s business to purchase light bulbs, not a student organization’s.  Second, while these fluorescent light bulbs have been praised by environmentalists for how “eco-friendly,” they can also be very dangerous to humans and the environment if they are broken, because they contain mercury.  Estimated clean-up costs for a broken fluorescent light bulb are about $5,000.  So members of SEA, make sure you don’t break one, or you’ll have a real lesson in environmental clean-up, from the very device that you want to use to save the earth.

 

SGA passed this Bear Grant, after much deliberation, by an estimated 3-1 margin.  Of course, you or I will never know who voted on each side because SGA does not record their votes.  They are able to shield themselves from criticism by voting anonymously.  This is a prime opportunity for students to pressure their representatives to make SGA open by forcing them to record and publicly publish the results of every vote taken by the Senate.  This would give students an opportunity to hold their representatives accountable for their votes.  Right now they can hide because we do not know how they vote.  It is time for an amendment to the SGA constitution or bylaws that will require every vote to be recorded and publicized.

 

There is one group of students (other than SEA) who can celebrate this Bear Grant.  AniMercer, you have now been relieved of the position of students’ whipping-boy for wasting student activity fees.