Sat 16 Feb 2008
The new co-presidents are Jeremy Goldstein ‘09 and Peter Nurnberg ‘09, who received a majority on the first ballot against two other running pairs. Platform and self-nom in the rest of the post.
Platform
As involved members of the Williams community, we are in touch with the views of the student body and have the leadership experience necessary to deliver concrete results. Under our leadership, College Council will be a resource for all students and an effective advocate for student interests. We will make the student body proud by standing up to the administration and making sure student voices are heard in the inner offices of Hopkins Hall. We will take you seriously and act upon your concerns.
1. Funding for Student Organizations
To make sure that financial limitations do not curtail group activities or prohibit students from joining groups, we will do the following to magnify the funding available to student groups.
–Fight with the administration and development office to enable groups to reach out to and solicit donations from alumni.
–Work to allow alumni to tax-deductible donations for a specific student group.2. Making Sure the Student Body is Heard
To often, the administration is unaware of student opinions. We will be proactive to make sure we are representing the broadest possible range of opinions. We will do the following:
–Attend the meetings of as many student organizations as possible: We will be there to listen and ask what CC can do to help each group achieve its objectives.
–Go to house common rooms: Instead of holding CC office hours and waiting for people to come by, we will go to you. We will be there to provide an outlet for the concerns and opinions of those interested in talking to us.3. Communication between the Administration & Students
Whether it is the renovations of Goodrich, the change in Paresky’s hours, or cluster housing, students do not have enough influence on important decisions. We will change this by doing the following:
–Making sure the administration informs the campus about policy ideas before final decisions are made and the ideas are implemented
–Convincing the administration to decide campus life issues with binding all campus referendums4. Long Term Projects
We will address concerns raised by students and aggressively pursue the following platform projects:
–Opening a subsidized on campus convenience store. Instead of watching the school subsidize the rent of the ephorium owners, we will work to use those resources to subsidize student purchases.
–Assessment of campus public spaces and hours. Especially after the renovations to Goodrich, the student body has insufficient space to hold events, do work late into the night, or just hang out. We will organize an evaluation of the programming, work, and common spaces on campus and work with the administration and facilities until campus spaces meet the needs of the student body.All of these goals are attainable, and we are confident that we can achieve them. Please vote Goldstein and Nurnberg for CC co-presidents.
Self Nomination
College council (CC) presidents directly impact every student’s experience at Williams. In addition running CC, the co-presidents are the main liaisons between the student body and the administration. By representing the student body’s interests and opinions to the administration, the CC co-presidents determine the extent to which those opinions are heard and acted upon.
We are in the best position to both assure that the student body’s voice is heard and to successfully pursue projects important to everybody on campus. Jeremy has his thumb on the pulse of campus. As a Record editor and JA, he has ensured that the student body receives objective information about the important issues facing the College and has devoted his Junior year to helping freshman acclimate to life at Williams. As a tour guide and a varsity swimmer, he has been a public face and cheerleader of Williams College. No student is better at using student government to effectively pursue the interests of the student body than Peter. Having been the treasurer of CC, three year member of the CC finance committee, chair of the general fund allocation committee, chair of the social event co-sponsorship committee, treasurer of Dodd neighborhood and the treasurer of the Jewish Association, Peter knows how to and has used the school’s financial resources to meet the goals of all students and student organizations. As the President of Dodd neighborhood, Peter has worked to make the best of the residential program forced on the student body and demonstrated his responsiveness to the needs and concerns of his constituents by, for instance, supplying new kitchen equipment to the Dodd houses and negotiating with the administration to change Dodd dinning hall’s hours to meet the expressed preferences of its users. Most importantly, having been a CC officer, Peter has experience dealing with the administration to pursue the interests of the student body.
If elected, we will take a three pronged approach to running CC: 1) aggressively pursue our platform projects, 2) work on project ideas brought to us by any member of the student body, and 3) establish an effective infrastructure for handling major unforeseen issues that arise throughout the year. As part of prong 1, we will immediately pursue the following projects.
1) We will fight to allow alumni to donate directly to student organizations. Currently the school prohibits clubs from seeking outside financial assistance. Under our plan, clubs would be allowed to reach out to alumni and alumni would be allowed to direct a portion of their donations to a campus group of their choice. As part of this project, we will establish a viable concerts endowment and magnify the funding available for all campus concerts.
2) We will work to open a subsidized grocery store on campus. Students are overcharged and forced to select from an inadequate stock of groceries at Ephorium. We will work to move the basement gelato room to a private unused area of Pareksy and transform that space into a subsidized convenience store – similar to the ones at many of our peer institutions.
3) We will conduct a review of the public spaces on campus and their hours, present our findings to the student body, hold a referendum to get student input and then fight to make sure that students have access to the spaces – both programming, studying and other – that they want.
College Council needs leaders who understand the needs of the student body and have the experience to effectively address students’ concerns. We have that experience, a strong track record of listening to students, and a history of working to improve the Williams community. As always, please approach either of us with any questions or concerns.Sincerely,
Peter Nurnberg and Jeremy Goldstein
February 16th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Loved this part:
Excellent idea! See previous discussion here. I am available to help with the alumni end of this at anytime. You know where to find me . . .
Note that I have already registered http://www.ephschoose.org for just his purpose . . .
And note that, because we live in a free country, you do not need the permission of the administration (which you will never, ever get) to go forward with this plan.
(If there is an official school policy on this, I would appreciate a pointer. I bet that this is just something that officials tell students when they ask. It isn’t, I bet, in the Student Handbook. And anything that isn’t in the Student Handbook (and isn’t against the law of Massachusetts) is allowed.
February 17th, 2008 at 3:31 am
This is not a great idea. When I was a student, I would have thought it was. But I’ve learned a lot about fundraising. I get why Peter and Jeremy’s fires are stoked, but I am surprise that they run on the platform of better communication with the admin and direct soliciting. One would think that they would have heard some straight answers from the admin about why this is undesirable from theur POV . . . I think Morty would be pretty straight up on the subject.
First, there are some legal issues with letting students solicit IF these are to be charitable contributions. Students would need to be trained as fundraisers, possibly licensed, and unless a group became a seperate 501(c)3 from Williams would need College permission to solicit on its behalf. Then they would need the knowledge and sophistication to know things like how much of a donation is tax deductable, and what you can and cannot and must provide to a donor by law.
Maybe it seems like these are legal excuses the college would be using to avoid letting students solicit alums directly, but it’s the truth that letting students do so could create some real legal exposure if the donations were tax deductible . . . maybe even if they weren’t.
And, of course, it truly might be bad for the college overall to allow this. Hey, I am all for the true needs of student getting funding, but the competition among students for a fixed pot now seems a pretty good model. David, I thought you were against giving to non-mission related purposes. Don’t you realize that would be one of the biggest things student groups would solicit for? I can’t tell you how many times student very well meaning student groups tried to get the college or college council to donate to something like disaster relief, something worth but of such a large scope that it really wasn’t appropriate. Let these groups solicit alumni and many students will solicit for all the things you don’t want, right David? Like the local elementary funding?
There would be advantages to be sure, and definite plus sides, not the least of which is real valuable fundraising experience. But the negatives and risks outlined here are substantial.
February 17th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
1) I agree that this is a non-trivial project, for the reasons that you outline. Still, it is not that hard. My advice would be to set up a Mass non-profit. (I have done this.) You can then accept donations and issue nice letters which allow for the charitable deduction, just as Williams does. You would, obviously, want to recruit a board that included both a) people willing to fund the effort and b) people with experience in non-profits. But again, the technical hurdles are not that great.
2) Your point about all the non-Williams-related stuff that students might ask for is important. But, again, that is why EphsChoose will have a board and a mission statement. I, for one, would only be on the board if allowed projects were restricted to ones directly connected to student life. Students could solicit for hurricane relief, or whatever, but those projects would not get funded. Students who solicited for funding so that they could go to New Orleans and help rebuild houses would get funded.
But nothing prevents someone from arranging things differently so that such solicitations were allowed or even encouraged. It is a free country.
How will Morty and VP of Alumni Affairs Steve Birrell react? They undoubtedly will think that his is a bad idea and will want it to fail. But they are probably smart enough to not tell Goldstein and Nurnburg that. Instead, they will use the favorite academics trick of smiling delay. They’ll say:
“Interesting idea! Why don’t you prepare a formal plan which you can presented to the next meeting of the Society of Alumni Executive Committee in April.”
Two months go by. They present at SoA.
“Interesting idea! But have you thought about (reasonable complication) X, Y and Z? You haven’t? No worries! Why don’t you look into it, ideally surveying other NESCAC schools to see what they do. Then present to the fall SoA meeting in September.”
Five months pass. They present again at SoA.
“Good stuff! But what about (reasonable difficulty) A, B and C?We definitely need to handle that somehow. Put some more work in, write a full report, and we will put in on the agenda for he Trustee meeting in January.”
4 months go by.
“Sorry, the Trustees didn’t think that this was the best way to go. Great work, though!”
By this time, Morty and Steve will think, the CC presidents will be overwhelmed with other projects and counting the days until their terms are up. Problem solved!
I hope that they don’t let this happen. If they don’t launch live (an organization, a webpage, a board, some initial funding, et cetera) by September, this won’t happen.
Good luck! I think that this project has the chance to radically change, for the better, the relationship between alumni and students.
February 17th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Congrats. As a former CC co-prez, I can let you in a secret: after you assume your new post, you will gain immediate access to the secret dining hall staffed by Mezze chefs, win the “lottery” for top pick in the housing draw, have a NYTimes delivered to your doorstep each day by Morty, acquire the ability to travel back in time when you just can’t make that 10:00 paper deadline, and last but not least, become campus sex gods. At least, that is how I remember it, 10 years after the fact.
February 17th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Since Jeff has made a comment on the ‘power a position can hold’, I will take the opportunity to make an off-subject aside to Jonathan about a particular ‘hold on a position of power’…
Your fellow bridge aficionado, Warren Buffett, was on Charles Osgood this morning waxing eloquent (on the game) to such a degree that he said something to the effect of:
If I’m playing bridge and a naked woman walked by, I wouldn’t even see her.
He did add: “Don’t test me on that.”
Wow, some game.
February 18th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Three other problems with the fundraising proposal:
- Fundraising is often extremely time-consuming and burdensome. Ask the student athletes who are required (under special programs that are heavily supervised by the coaches) to put in time to fund general team expenses (including the coaches’ expenses) and scholarships for Spring Break or other training trips (and some of whom are also working campus jobs to fund their personal portions, of the trips). It may not be nearly as appealing as it seems. From an organizational perspective, fundraising can help build group bonding (to a point) but it also takes time away from pursuing or participating in the group’s mission or common interest.
- Allowing general fundraising by groups would predictably work to the advantage of some groups and the disadvantage of others in the competition for funds. Older, established groups with lots of alumni will tend to fare much better than new groups. Remembering back to the beginning of coeducation, imagine how start-ups (that would have benefited greatly from funds and would have had special start up costs) such as women’s singing groups or intramural teams might have fared in entering a competition for alumni funds against established groups, and think also of the time commitment entailed in fundraising so on top of the serious time commitment involved in getting a new group started. International students may be the closest current parallels to the early groups of women (and think of the extra level of difficulties American tax and fundraising laws might pose for them)
- If fundraising were allowed, the administration would probably decrease the pot available for CC grants to student groups. Dividing this remaining money fairly would become even more complex than it now is. Fundraising would become the norm, forcing groups that have no interest in fundraising (or in the apparently forthcoming CC initiative to allow fundraising) to have to fundraise to keep their heads above the water. What they could have received by making a fairly simple annual or semester application to the CC they would now have to work to get, competing constantly against other Williams groups not so much on the basis of the soundness of their proposals but more on the basis of other factors such as who they knew, how clever or glitzy their fundraising campaigns were, and how much seed money they had to put into fundraising efforts.
Relying on Uncle Eph may seem feudal, but I suspect that many campus organizations are far better off under the current plan than they would be under the proposed one. And then there’s the whole situation of the financial mess that ACE has repeatedly gotten itself into (suggesting that fundraising would need to come with oversight, extra organization and paperwork, training, and perhaps — depending on Massachusetts law — even insurance to protect individual student officers).
Before investing a lot of energy in this can of worms, I suggest that the Co-Presidents Elect ask to sit down with President Schapiro and the College’s legal advisor and get a complete understanding of the legal, financial, and necessary oversight ramifications of their proposal. There is so much that could be done to make Williams even better that it’s a shame to waste energy on ideas that seem to be either unworkable or counter-productive.
February 18th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Response to Larry George:
1) “Fundraising is often extremely time-consuming and burdensome.” True! So, only students who want to do it will have to do it. But learning how to ask strangers for money is a great skill to have.
2) “Allowing general fundraising by groups would predictably work to the advantage of some groups and the disadvantage of others in the competition for funds.” True! I bet that the Octet would do great, a brand new singing group less so. But the same applies to the current reality. Students who understand the CC process or know important faculty/administrators have a much easier time getting their projects funded than students who don’t.
3) “If fundraising were allowed, the administration would probably decrease the pot available for CC grants to student groups.” Evidence? You have none. Has the College spent less money on sports teams since it allowed (encouraged?) teams to start raising extra funds? No. Moreover, just because you think that the College might do stupid thing X after we make good change Y is no reason to not to Y. Instead, we do Y and then fight stupid thing X. Besides, aren’t student activity funds a direct line item on term bills? You really think that the College would cut this? I will take the other side of that bet.
More later.
February 18th, 2008 at 10:25 am
As to # 1, part of my point is that students who don’t want to fundraise, or don’t have the time, may have to, especially if I am correct that the grant pool amount from student fees will decrease (or remain stagnant).
As to # 2, your points don’t follow. Whether an organization is new or old in the grant process tells us nothing about whether the applicants are savvy or well-connected, and thus more likely to succeed in their application. We agree that new organizations would be likely to be disadvantaged in going to alumni, relative to long-established groups that have a lot of group alumni.
As to #3, perhaps the College would not cut the activity fee, but consciously not raising it over time (a more likely scenario) would have the same effect in the long run. I’m against the alumni fundraising proposal but, if it were implemented, I’m not sure that I would be opposed to something of a cap on the fees given that funds were coming from elsewhere. The cost of higher education ratchets upward far in excess of the inflation rate; I’m generally in favor of a great deal more self-control in any way that does not undermine the College’s programs (and in this case, lowering or capping the fees would not, in a very broad sense, undermine student activities in that the total pot of money going to them would probably be equal or greater than the amount going to them at present).