Opinion
SA funding falls short
By Evelyn Torsher ’17
October 1, 2015
I won’t dance around it: the past few student assembly meetings have been rough. Nobody likes going through budget proposals with a fine-toothed comb or looking a peer in the eye to break the news that their project will go unfunded. SA’s funding practices may not be ideal, but they are effective. I think that the funding process (and the unrest that surrounded it) is symptomatic of a more generalized identity crisis facing Hamilton’s SA. Furthermore, a lot of the criticisms SA has received in response to funding are reflective of a harsh reality of the real world (the world we will one day all have to face after graduation): life isn’t fair.
Since I began participating in SA last year, I have noticed a sense of listlessness among its members. What is its purpose? While I mean no disrespect to Andrew and Silvia (this is not a new problem), SA seems to be caught in a limbo between wanting to be a serious bureaucratic body in the eyes of administrators and acting as an association of young activists earnestly hoping to make changes. If SA wants to be taken seriously in any capacity, it needs to get more specific about its policies, its purpose and its goals. SA has made great strides in recent months in terms of transparency, but I worry that, as a result, student frustration in regard to the assembly’s opacity has been replaced with frustration in regard to its futility.
Last week SA gave away every last penny in its account, and major cuts had to be made in order to accommodate that. The assembly did its best to be thorough and fair in addressing these cuts, and the job was not taken lightly. SA cannot fund every proposal that comes through, and unfortunately, no one is entitled to any amount of money. It is our responsibility as smart, active students to not let ourselves be fooled by past precedents. The fact that I really want to hold a certain event or that I pulled it off last year is no longer enough to make my organization stand out. We need to stay creative, get active and be ambitious if we want to get what we want, because, unfortunately, not everyone can get what he or she wants.