| Letter | May. 15, 2008 | 8:25 pm |
ASG’s funding is centrally-planned and inefficient
LettersFor as long as there have been planned economies, planned economies have failed — miserably. The former Soviet Union, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Croatia are examples, to name a few. Even the shortfalls of planned economies are well-known: shortages, surpluses, lack of incentive for innovation and even corruption. Yet, year after year at Northwestern we students willingly submit to the failed policies of central economic planning: ASG.
Every year, ASG begins its tyranny by stealing a sum of money from each and every student. Sure, it gives this theft a rosy name — the “Student Activities Fee” — but I certainly did not voluntarily give this money to ASG. Did you? And then with this money, ASG relies on its friends—or should I say comrades?— on the Student Activities Funding Board to decide where this money ought to go, before officially giving away your money in whatever fashion it deems appropriate. And so it goes with the status quo.
Certainly this band of college students knows how to spend my money better than I do, right? I might do something silly and spend it all on things I value, rather than give it to groups which other people deem important. In fact, if I were allowed to spend my own money, I might do something crazy and give it to a group not “recognized” by ASG. What a ridiculous, horrible outcome that would be!
If only there were some allocation mechanism for funding that did not involve ASG or another central planning committee…
The question regarding ASG funding is not to whom ASG should give money, but rather — should ASG be allowed to provide funding at all? Emphatically, no. The fact is simply that ASG fundamentally can never allocate funds efficiently or fairly the way students working in their own self-interests can. Markets work. Period.
How many students were denied tickets to see Girl Talk, B.J. Novak, or The Flight of the Conchords this year? Well, that is simply too bad for those students since they were forced to fund events they could not attend. How many ASG funded events have you, the reader, not attended this year? Well, too bad — because you paid for those too.
Critics will claim that certain events would never happen without ASG funding. To that I say: good riddance! If the free market would not provide such events, it is clear that the students do not actually value them. But what critics do not consider is the events that do occur will be better than ever.
Imagine if student groups were required to fundraise for and charge admission to their events. What do you think would be the likely outcome? As with any sort of competition, the product, in this case the events, would get better and better as groups vied for students’ dollars. Groups would collaborate with one another and pool resources in efforts to win students over.
All ASG’s central planning does is promote mediocrity. Mayfest, for example, has no real incentive to make Dillo Day great. If it is simply good enough for students to attend, then of course they will. Mayfest just has to sit back and wait for ASG to bless them with thousands of dollars. What if Mayfest had to work for that money? Imagine how responsive they would become to students’ desires. (I mean Mayfest and Dillo Day no offense. I simply chose them as timely examples.)
Central planning has never been and will never be an efficient means of allocation. History is strewn with examples of failed attempts. When will Northwestern students stop submitting themselves to such oppression and rise up to take control of their own lives? We do not need ASG funding. Give the students their money back and allow freedom to thrive.
– Daniel Kaatz
SESP junior
Anil W. said,
May 15, 2008 @ 8:55 pm
The Student Activity Fund is NOT mandatory. You don’t have to pay it if you don’t want to. But that means you have no right to attend any SAF funded events.
SAFB recommends and ASG allocates funds to student organizations that are most likely to pull off successful events. It’s like an investment, and they are trying to maximize returns. When student organizations mismanage their funding or fail to follow through on proposals for which they were funded, they receive less money during the next cycle. Conversely, when they do well, it’s likely that they will get an increase in funding.
In that respect, student organizations do have to ‘work for their money’. If they suck, they lose funding. Mayfest gets loads of money because that have pulled off awesome Dillo Days in years past, and they have demonstrated that they are sufficiently positioned to do so again.
As for limited availability of tickets, club heads have said repeatedly that this is a limitation of the venues on campus. ASG and many club heads have actively asked the administration for a larger multipurpose venue for concerts, speakers, and other events, but as of yet, the university has not made the construction of such a venue a high priority.
I’ll agree that funding is arduous. But would you really want 50 tables of people by the arch, fund raising for their events. By placing money in a centrally-managed fund, we are optimizing the ability of student organizations to put a diverse array of successful events.
I’m glad that I have the opportunity to attend these events and not the one that has to deal with the bureaucratic process of funding them.
You should be, too.
student said,
May 17, 2008 @ 5:15 pm
Yeah, I’d have to agree that Daniel’s idea is a terrible one that really doesn’t reflect the reality of student programming, and I say this as a student group leader who recently went through the difficult funding process and came out with less money from the SAF than I’d been hoping for coming in.
Putting on events on campus is a very difficult process. There are a lot of hoops to jump through in obtaining permission for the event, getting the contracts signed, promotion, and countless other activities that are too numerous to even mention, muss less describe in detail. To require student groups to raise the money on top of that would in most cases make it impossible to put on an event. If you don’t have money up front to pay somebody, it doesn’t matter how much money you could make selling tickets to a bunch of (cash-poor and notoriously unreliable) college students. Very few legitimate speakers are going to come to campus based on the promise of a cut from the ticket sales.
The funding process is indeed arduous and should absolutely be opened to more (probably all) student groups, but Daniel’s idea really isn’t going to improve the quality of programming on campus. If I had to decide where the money for my activities fee was going, it would probably be spent on cases of Busch Lite, weed, blunt wraps, and concerts in Chicago. Each of the 8000 other undergrads on campus has his or her own priorities. ASG is like every other form of government: yes, it levies taxes on you, but it provides services that you couldn’t perform for yourself. Put simply, there would be no Mayfest without the SAF, there would be no Girl Talk, no BJ Novak, there would be less student initiatives like ASB trips or volunteering activities. It would just be too much to coordinate things like that while simultaneously having to raise the money for them from scratch.
You don't know what you're talking about said,
May 19, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
While you certainly do have some good points as far as the inefficiency of centrally planned economies in general, I think you are missing a couple big points.
You fail to recognize that the SAFB has a method in place for ensuring that funds are distributed according to a MARKET model. (Yes I said MARKET.) At each round of funding, student groups must submit the numbers for attendance of each of their events for the previous year. This, in conjunction with other factors such as the quality of events and plans for fugture ones, then decides funding for the next year. It isn’t just at the arbitrary whim of the SAFB; they have standards and rationale for all of their funding choices. Are they always exactly fair? No. Do they do a very good job of estimating demand for certain programming and dividing money rationally and justifiably? Most certainly yes.
This system ensures that money is not only divided proportionately according to demand and popularity, but it provides an incentive for the groups to make their events as large as possible. Shows like Flight of the Conchords or BJ Novak were impossible to let more students come to because of the unreasonable restraints on venue choice that are placed on A&O by the University. Cahn can only hold 2000 or so students, and larger venues like Welsh-Ryan cost an exorbitant amount of money just to open the doors. This is why for several years now groups like A&O have lobbied the administration for the creation of a 3000+ seating venue for large-scale programming.
To say that groups like Mayfest or A&O have “no incentive” to create quality programming is flat-out false. First, people only join those groups because they are passionate about them and want to put on good shows. They don’t just sit back and wait for money to come in. Second, as I mentioned before, money is divided up by attendance so the more popular the acts and the better produced events that Mayfest or A&O bring, the more people come out, and the more money they then get the next year. To suggest that these groups should have to “work for the money” is ridiculous. Events like Dillo Day are for all the students, not for the members of Mayfest. Do you think that the people that work so hard all year long to put on a day of fun and music like that do it just for fun? Why make the students that sacrifice so much time, sweat and stress over producing an event for the school then have to raise money for it too? Puh-leeze.
So, you see, the money actually is divided up by somewhat of a market system. Is it perfect? No. Does it work? As a member of 2 ASG A-status group executive boards, I would say so. Others may disagree, but there is no denying that the programming that these student groups put on is high quality and that the SAF system has been an overall success.