ZACH BEAUDOIN
Special to The Leader
With the significant changes to the hours of many of the campus’ dining facilities, there’s been reasonably a lot of outrage.
FSA’s response will be “it’s the best we can do in this economic situation.”
Which, as a former FSA board member, I’d respond is a cop-out. It’s the organization’s inability to break tradition of passing cuts onto the students and the executives’ refusal to sacrifice their benefits.
I’ve seen the budgets, and I was one of the students that suggested charging a bit more to mitigate some of the damage in the last budget.
However, even when the students toss FSA a bone, we’re still the biggest ones impacted. It’s never the perks of the job that are afforded to the executives like Darin Schulz or his immediate subordinates.
Instead, they justify the tightening of the belt by comparing their changes to other schools and saying that students just don’t understand.
Which, maybe some don’t, but that is a gross underestimation of the intelligence of an extremely bright group of students.
There are many other options to consider when looking at the budget, which is hard for students to look at before it is actually posted. Even our journalists have trouble finding it.
For the sake of debate though, let’s consider what it would take to make the hours and prices more acceptable to students.
FSA is an auxiliary non-profit for the campus, which means that all funds go back to the students.
If we wanted to pay less or have better hours, we could reduce the amount of money that is allocated to the president. This would reduce programming funds that her office can distribute, but it would also free up the budget a bit.
We could also look at a significant cut to the benefits (which are “secret”) that are given to the top tier of the FSA employees, like making them pay more for health insurance and paying for their free meals and/or drinks.
Even a probably minuscule but worthy cut would be eliminating the breakfast before every board meeting and the other luxury meals that the board members enjoy (sometimes it’s even lobster).
This will probably be shot down, however, so what is another option?
We demand that FSA eliminate the strict conditions on meal plans that effectively steal from the students. We tell them that if they close at 5 p.m., we should be able to use meals more liberally. We demand that they allow for point limits to be changed to a more favorable maximum.
Along with this, we need to find a better way to allocate meals, preventing students from losing multiple meals from their inability to use them. If we were to calculate the free money given to FSA, I’m sure we’d be astounded.
If that doesn’t work, then the ultimatum would be to refund the money at the end of the year.
Plain and simple.
We’re paying for a product, and if we aren’t given reasonable access to that product, then we deserve to be refunded.
Zach Beaudoin is a senior English and international studies major and former member of the FSA board.