Ghosts of Fees Past: Allocation of funds should be aligned with interests of current students

When the UCLA undergraduate student body votes next month whether or not to approve a fee increase of $3, generations of students for years to come will be affected by that decision. But don’t worry, UCLA. No pressure.

The $3 per student per quarter, if approved, would go toward funds that are dispersed to student groups, with 25 percent of the revenue going to financial aid, said David Bocarsly, Undergraduate Students Association Council general representative.

But even after every single student currently enrolled at UCLA graduates, future students will still be paying the same $3 per quarter for the same purpose.

A system that imposes on the student body the will of its predecessors cannot attain a finely tuned reflection of the wants and needs of current students. To restore sanity to the system, an effort must be made to align fee allocations to the preferences and values of students enrolled at UCLA today.

Unfortunately, the way our student government works means that this effort cannot happen in one fell swoop. Each individual fee has to originate in the council and gain approval from the chancellor before it can even make it to a campus-wide ballot.

At the very least, USAC should make the effort to poll the student body and determine its funding priorities. That way, if students want more money to go toward, for example, retention, USAC can take steps to make that happen.

In a karmic sense, the current system works out. We impose taxes on future students, and in turn we pay fees that were set by those that came before us.

But it just doesn’t seem equitable that we are haunted by the fancies of past student bodies. Nor is it justifiable for us to impose our whim on faceless, nameless students that will enroll 10 years from now.

Forget about the vast majority of the fees we pay each year. According to the Registrar’s Office, most of this money is cordoned off into the category of “tuition” ““ to be precise, $11,220 for residents and $22,878 on top of that sum for nonresidents. This fee goes toward expenses such as faculty salaries and is set by the UC Board of Regents.

At stake here is about $150 that have been earmarked by referendums to be spent, so to speak, by students for students.

This money includes the Undergraduate Students Association fee that supplies all USAC offices, programs and funds, along with fees directed toward retention and access as well as membership in student interest groups.

“There are referendums that are articulated to the student body: “˜We bring to you this referendum for your approval or disapproval. If you vote yes, it will be used for these purposes,'” said Roy Champawat, director of the UCLA Student Union. “Over the course of decades, (student fees are) an assembly of intentions.”

Admittedly, the students that voted for the fees that we pay today had their reasons. But the value systems and campus conditions on which they were acting were necessarily different than the ones UCLA faces today. This “assembly of intentions” represents a hodgepodge of agendas that served the student body of the time, but not necessarily the student body of today.

“It would be an incredible set of coincidences that after decades it is a perfect distribution,” Champawat said.

It is essential that we rid ourselves of the ghosts of student bodies past. The only way this exorcism can proceed is by determining where the 27,000 of us currently enrolled at UCLA would like our money to go. In good faith, such a review should happen every time we have a completely new student body, or every four years.

The money that we drop into USAC’s coffers each quarter is just that: our money.

It does not belong to the students that went here 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, nor does it belong to the students that will be here 10, 20 and 30 years from now. As such, it should serve our interests, not theirs.

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