To gauge support for providing student activities funds to a broader range of student social groups -- including Greek houses -- the Student Assembly sent out a campus-wide email last night asking for student opinion on where such funds should be directed.
The BlitzMail message asked students to identify the social spaces most in need of improvement, how many times a week they use various social spaces and whether student activities money should be used to fund improvements to coed, sorority and fraternity organizations, the Fuel nightclub and affinity houses.
"We want to see if the College is funding spaces that students actually use," Student Life Committee Chair Amit Anand '03 said.
The survey was inspired by a suggestion from Student Life Committee Member Jim Baehr '05 that the Assembly use some of its funding to make improvements in run-down fraternity basements.
"I see a really need for fraternities' social spaces not to be as disgusting as they have been," Baehr said. "This would be a good way for Student Assembly to devote money to places students really go to, instead of trying to engage in some kind of social engineering."
Baehr added that he supports general campus beautification and would not be opposed to granting money to other organizations besides CFS houses, something the BlitzMail survey indicates that the Assembly is considering.
Every term, $57 of each student's College bill goes into the Student Activities Fund, which the Undergraduate Finance Committee then distributes to various student organizations according to the petitions they submit.
Before funds are allocated in mid-November, the Assembly and other groups will be trying to convince the UFC -- chaired by Student Body President Janos Marton '04 -- to fund their various projects.
Speaking at the Assembly meeting last night, Anand called the plan -- which remains a work in progress -- "a pretty major project that would definitely make a big impact on the campus."
However, the announcement of the plan came without much fanfare or explanation and was sandwiched among several rapid-fire summaries of the week's activities by other Committee chairs, who seemed eager to be brief after listening to lengthy presentations by N.H. State Representative Bernie Benn and Richard Callahan '03, the student representative to the Council on Libraries.
Callahan's announcement that the College's library budget will sustain a 6.25 to 6.5 percent cut over the next five to eight years provoked a strong reaction from the Assembly, several of whom wanted to know the details of how and why the cuts were made.
"It's a little frustrating that 30 or 40 million dollars have been spent on the Baker-Berry library renovation and now they're making budget cuts to the libraries," Administration/Faculty Relations Chair Andy Edwards '04 said. "If it's not built to be financially sustainable, it's kind of ironic."
An Assembly member who works in library circulation said he had heard rumors of student library jobs being cut and wanted to know if this would be the case.
Marton kept a low profile during most of the meeting, but discussed the highlight's of his hour-and-a-half long meeting with Dean of the College James Larimore on the new College alcohol policy.
Calling the email Larimore sent out to the student body on the subject last week "a little vague," Marton told the Assembly that he wanted to clarify a number of points, including the fact that the Good Samaritan Policy can be used "as many times as students want, as long as it's clear it's not being abused."
Marton also explained that Greek houses can hold unregistered social events as long as they do not include more than the house's total number of members.
