JAMES LILLIN
Staff Writer
Each year, students expect to vote on a new slate of executives to lead the Student Association (SA), but most students aren’t aware that another vote goes on every two years that determines whether or not the Student Activity Fee remains mandatory for students or becomes optional.
“The students have the right to vote on whether or not they want to spend the money,” said senior political science and psychology major Nathaniel Clark, who currently serves as SA’s speaker of the general assembly.
Clark sees the biennial vote as necessary to foster respect and trust among the student body.
“For us to be a truly representative body of Fredonia students, we need to ask the students that we are currently governing what they think and what they want,” said Clark. “I would 110 percent choose to have this vote.”
Clark respects the right of the students to decide what is done with their money, but concedes that there would likely be severe consequences should the fee become voluntary.
“If every single student at Fredonia checked the box and volunteered to pay that fee, then we could continue as-is and nothing would change,” said Clark. “Still, I personally think that if you gave college students an opportunity to pay less for college, then most people would look at that and think, ‘I don’t even know what a Student Activity Fee is,’ and not check the box [to pay the fee].”
As for whether or not students would actually choose to pay, the answer is unclear.
“I would pay it because a lot of the groups that I’m a part of, and that I support are part of, and completely funded by SA,” said senior acting major Nick Cahill, “ but I think that a ton of people would be like ‘A $100 fee?’ and wouldn’t pay it, because they wouldn’t understand.”
Should a majority of students choose not to pay the fee, results would likely range from bad to disastrous for the state of SA.
“If we had to scale down our budgets to a degree of ten, we’d have to scale down our services to a degree of ten, and our services are our clubs,” said Clark.
One potential way that SA would handle a downsizing of that scale would be to simply cut every group below the constituted level.
“We’re talking maybe ten thousand dollars for all the constituted groups to share,” said Clark, “and most constituted groups have more than that individually, so one can only imagine the fallout.”
This situation would only be compounded by SA’s existing rule that all activities paid for by SA money are open to all “fee-paying students.”
“You’d be allowed to attend meetings but you wouldn’t be able to attend events that SA money paid for,” said senior finance and computer information systems major and SA President Jason Burgos, adding, “It would be very, very hard to monitor.”
There’s a reason that SA is more worried about the vote this year than for previous year: starting this semester, all voting will be done online, instead of at a voting station in the Williams Center.
“[Previous turnout] numbers were a little on the lower side, and so that’s why we changed to an electronic system, so that we can have greater voter participation and give ourselves a more legitimate mandate to say that we represent the students,” said Clark. “It’s a double-edged sword, however, because the previous electorate had been biased in favor of a mandatory vote because most of the students voting were very passionate, in-the-know individuals who were often quite involved with SA.”
Clark is indifferent as to the results of the vote, so long as the student body knows what is being voted on.
“The last thing we want,” said Clark “is for people to vote and then come to us the day after the election and then ask ‘so, what is that Activity Fee for?’”
Regardless of the outcome, Clark recognizes that Fredonia’s clubs are an integral part of its culture and community and hold an important place in the hearts of many students.
“I talk to people in some of our groups, and they talk about how these communities are literally lifesavers in some instances,” said Clark, “that these groups opened their eyes to who they really are, forged their deepest connections and are, ultimately, why they stayed at Fredonia.“