There are many ways to right a sinking budget
By Avni Nijhawan
July 13, 2009 11:26 a.m.
It’s time to make a $40-million baby.
Green living, for example, could easily turn into a little green in our wallets and is a plus for the planet. Last week, UCLA computer support coordinators found that $2.5 million could be saved by altering basic office habits, including adjusting computer settings, sharing printers and teleconferencing instead of commuting (a good reason to podcast lectures, professors!). Another easy way to save money is to turn your computer off or put it on standby whenever you aren’t using it. Todd King, a programmer-analyst at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, said he found that computers cost approximately $150 a year in energy, but that cost can be significantly reduced by shutting it off for half of the day.
Many routine UCLA procedures aren’t environmentally friendly or cost-efficient in any way ““ like printing at Powell Library. With every print job, students get an utterly useless cover sheet which goes straight into the recycling bin. I’m glad we’re recycling these, but since they’re such a huge waste of money and resources, they shouldn’t be printed in the first place. The Life Sciences Computing printer, which is perhaps even busier than the ones at Powell, does not use such cover sheets, and neither do the printers on the Hill. Why use them at Powell?
Furthermore, a study done at Penn State University revealed that simply changing page margins from Microsoft’s standard settings to 0.75 inches all around uses about 5 percent less paper. Professors, it’s time to break with tradition and ask for 0.75-inch margins and double-sided printing.
The Hill is another area that needs to refine its operating techniques. An unused source of income ““ as much as they may not like to hear it ““ is resident assistants. UCLA hires about 180 RAs every year, which means free single rooms and food for 180 students. If we estimate $14,000 for a single room, that’s $2.52 million lost in potential housing fees. Now, if RAs paid just 50 percent of single-room housing fees, then we would generate an extra $1.26 million. A 50-60 percent reduction in housing fees should still be enough incentive to procure RAs, especially if we reduced some of their responsibilities – surely we don’t need all those arts and crafts programs. And RA-designated programs should be advertised through e-mail, not through endless piles of printer paper in every residence hall.
We should be minimizing food waste (and yes, students, that means remembering that the eye is often bigger than the stomach), and trying to make a profit on what’s left. Leftovers at Bruin Café and Puzzles could be cheaply sold to hungry students instead of being thrown away. We could even expand the sack lunch program to let students fill a box or bag of food at a dining hall for a swipe. This would give students more time to finish instead of leaving platefuls as they rush off.
The university should continue hosting events similar to Dance Marathon, which garner student and media attention, are fun for students and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars. Another Dance Marathon could be held, one that supports education for UCLA students and literacy abroad by offering to give a cut of proceeds to charities. It’s double the incentive for students and strangers alike to participate. In 1998, UCLA had a Marathon Reading event, where celebrities and students read stories aloud for 20 hours and made about $8,000 for student fellowships and travel. Once such events are available, it’s up to students to help advertise, create, run and participate in them.
When it comes to private funding, administrators should also keep in mind that we’re in glamour-filled Los Angeles. According to Judith Goodstein, an archivist at the California Institute of Technology, in an interview with Daniel Golden in his book “The Price of Admission,” “There are a serious number of significantly wealthy individuals, leaders of the business or legal world, who really get a charge out of rubbing shoulders with Nobel Prize winners.” We currently have two faculty and one living alumnus who have won Nobel Prizes ““ the responsibility rests on Chancellor Gene Block to harness their fundraising potential.
With student fees making up only one portion of the school’s revenue, raising fees is an insufficient solution to the problem, especially as it isolates (and even angers) a useful task force of 38,000 students. But protesting the raises is counterproductive. Instead, it’s best if we all pitch in as conscientious members of the UCLA community to try to keep costs as low as possible.
After all, we can’t make this baby alone
Have a million-dollar idea? Send 40 to [email protected]. ,
