The Arts and Sciences Council is raising its fee for students in the College of Arts and Sciences from four dollars to $10 over three years. Given the infusion of cash, I figured the Arts and Sciences Council would have an extra-tasty tailgate before Saturday's football game, so I headed over for a few cheese cubes and a free cup with a free brochure. The brochure, I hoped, might make me one of the few people on earth who know what the Arts and Science council actually does.
Sadly, the secret knowledge eluded me once more, as the brochure listed vague proposals like "foster a sense of unity" and "strengthen student identity," but not much about how they implement these goals besides printing brochures about them. To add to the confusion, on the list of officers, the treasurer was named as (I'm not making this up): "??"
Maybe it doesn't matter that my A&S fee is in such questionable hands. After all, it's just 10 bucks, and it would be silly to write a column about wasting ten dollars. But a funny thing happens to $10 when you take it from everyone in the College: it becomes over $90,000 and suddenly it matters what you do with it.
Besides Student-Faculty Trivia Night, the ASC Web site shows a smattering of other trivial activities including a "faculty dog show," a "college carnival" with huge inflatable moonwalks, and a "college birthday party" with an enormous cake.
The Web site also says, "Whether participating in too many extra-curricular activities or partying one too many nights, we all are guilty of ignoring our academics at some point." Note the inescapable irony of this statement by the extra-curricular club behind the above activities. Not that there aren't genuine ways the Arts and Sciences council could stimulate the academic discourse, but most of them don't involve golden retrievers or 50 cubic meters of inflatable fun.
The point is not to criticize the ASC for any of this, but merely to ask, if they are able to indulge in so many frivolous things by only taking four dollars, why must the fee go up 250 percent? If students' advising and departmental seminar needs aren't being met by the current budget, some of the current budget could be cut in the area of retreats, banquets and hula-hoop contests before students are asked to foot the bill.
The ASC does have at least one worthy program that encourages faculty and students to eat free lunches together. But according to the 2005-06 budget proposal, this makes less that 15 percent of the ASC's budget. The rest includes a lavish $2,000 Rotunda dinner for ASC members, $1,000 for a fall training lunch, $2,000 for independent study luncheons, $1,500 for the "College birthday" cake party, $400 for an ASC event with "light catering," $250 for snacks at meetings, not to mention $1,000 for "emergency" snacks, eh, "funds" -- a grand total of $56,000 or, according to Feed the Children, enough money to feed ahungry child for 583 years.
According to the proposal submitted for the fee increase, "Upon approval, the community will be notified [of the increase] by a Guest Viewpoint article in the Cavalier Daily." I'm sure they'll write it any day now -- but so far, students are paying an increased fee without any input or much effort to tell them why.
The ASC claims to spend much of its time and resources on a peer advising network. This is a nice idea, but there are more pressing advising issues, such as why undeclared students are paired with a random faculty advisor rather than one in a possible area of interest: it serves no one to put a possible anthropology major with an astrophysics advisor. Fixing this problem shouldn't require any extra cash. Even providing a peer advising network shouldn't require anyone to be bribed with vegetable trays from Sam's Club. Normal clubs can't siphon their budgets from the wallets of every oblivious student without at least breaking the honor code, and neither should the ASC.
ASC president David Reid said that programs deemed to be ineffective were subject to having their funding cut.But a good example of a program that's ineffective is the Arts and Sciences Council itself. Eviscerating the ASC budget might encourage them to focus less on hula-hoops and more on the issues they can solve with their brains. After all, using your brain is what sets the College of Arts and Sciences apart.
Herb Ladley is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at hladley@virginia.edu.
Read More
PATEL: Personal development courses support students beyond the gradebook
By Heer Patel | 3 days agoThe University must rethink its approach to education beyond traditional major-specific requirements and mandate personal development courses.
EDITORIAL: Commercialization threatens U.Va.’s educational mission
By Editorial Board | 4 days agoAfter all, measuring the University’s worth in terms of accrued capital, operational efficiency and numerical rankings molds this space into just another cookie-cutter institution.
YOUNIS: Why every U.Va. student should say yes to English
By Ayat Younis | January 9, 2025Every student at the University, regardless of their primary field of study, can professionally and academically benefit from engaging with the English department.
