Special Fee Refund Deadline Nears
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Stanford charges you $90 dollars a quarter for student activities. Of this, $72 goes to a small set of specific groups whose programming supposedly benefits the entire student body. Don’t think you get your money’s worth of programming? You can ask for a refund.
Despite Stanford’s twelve billion dollar endowment, Stanford’s vaunted 600 student groups draw much of their funding from fees assessed of students. The ASSU presides over the disbursement of funds to student groups. Any student group can petition the ASSU for general fees and receive up to six thousand dollars in funding (eight thousand for community service groups). Groups whose programming (ostensibly) benefits the entire campus community can instead petition for special fees and receive a theoretically unlimited amount of funding, so long as it is approved by the senate and receives 50% of the vote in April ASSU elections.
Last year, students were quite generous at the ballot box: all but one special fees group on the ballot received funding. While some groups really do benefit the entire campus, others’ claims on student money appear more spurious. Compare Stanford News Readership, whose $55,000 budget buys the entire campus 800 copies of the New York Times and the San Jose Mercury News every weekday with the 2% overhead to Volunteers in Latin America, which received $12,000 to buy airfare for fourteen Stanford volunteers to spend two months in Ecuador. Perhaps these volunteers will improve our Karma?
The voting process alone is wholly insufficient and doesn’t allow students choice in how their money is spent. Last year, fewer than half of undergraduates voted. Additionally, incoming Freshmen who will have to pay fees can’t vote, while seniors, most of whom do not return the next year, do vote. To its credit, the ASSU also lets you vote with your feet.
Students, however, can log on to refund.stanford.edu and request refunds for the quarter from any special fees group, and for the General fee (about $17). The total refund can total up to $90 per quarter. Students can also download a copy of groups’ special fees application, which includes an itemized accounting of how students’ fee money is spent. New this year is a feature which allows students to request a portion of their money given to any group be refunded. One word of caution: groups from whom you request refunds can and do deny you their services. For example, the Speakers’ bureau charges full price of students who have gotten refunds. How such groups will accommodate partial refunds is unclear.
Beyond a simple desire to save money, refund requests send a strong message to special fees groups that their programming does not benefit the general campus community, or that the group should seek funding from other sources. Groups who see special fees as their sole lifeblood and an entitlement miss the whole point of the program, which is to provide money solely for events that people out side of the group actually want. Perhaps unsurprisingly, students’ ability to assert their opinion and decide how their money is spent isn’t particularly well organized.
Plenty of groups with large budgets are conspicuous for their absence from the list of those receiving special funding, or for the low amount they request. While the mock trial team requested $12,000 in funding, the debate team is wholly absent from the list. Many groups receive additional money from The Stanford Fund and other groups like The Stanford Review have separate contributors.
We encourage you to look into your refund options and ask for your money to be spent wisely.
How to Request A Refund (October 13, 2006 Deadline)
1. Go to refund.stanford.edu
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and press ‘Select Refund’
3. After you’ve made your choices, request your refund.
Groups that should receive particular scrutiny:
1. Ethnic or race based groups (such as the Black Student Union, MEChA, the Asian America Student Association). These groups provide programming attended mostly by their members. In the past, there have been complaints that these groups tend to passively exclude students of other races.
2. Charitable groups (Such as Dance Marathon, Volunteer in Latin America). Shouldn’t students decide their charitable giving individually? Also, these groups seem to have high overhead for charities.
3. Mass entertainment (Flicks and Concert Network). These groups tax the entire student body to provide cheap tickets to on-campus films and concerts for some students.
For detailed information on individual groups, check out the Review’s special fees special issue from last April at:
http://www.stanfordreview.org/Archive/Volume_XXXVI/Issue_5/Features/features1.shtml
