[1200] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: A little rational thought---Objective and real power
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeremy H. Brown)
Thu Mar 14 15:53:55 2002
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Message-ID: <uv6vgbygaxr.fsf@suspiria.ai.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 15:18:40 -0500
From: "Jeremy H. Brown" <jhbrown@AI.MIT.EDU>
To: MIT-Talk@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <200203142005.PAA21142@mass-toolpike.mit.edu>
I'm just curious: does anyone have the stats on how money the UA
spends on itself each year vs. how much it distributes to student
groups? I know it used to be that the UA spent something crazy, like
20% or more, of the money on itself. Is that still true?
Jeremy
Philip Tan Boon Yew <philip@mit.edu> writes:
> >In short, I don't want your free stuff. I can get my own stuff. I want
> >someone to effectively represent my views as an undergraduate to the
> >rest of MIT. Not someone to beg for money or build a community for me.
>
> Sure. For those people who run student groups and try to support
> student-activity communities that grew organically, they may believe
> that extricating more money from MIT's budget is an important part of
> a candidate's platform, especially if tuition keeps increasing. It's
> not free stuff...some part of it comes from our own money, more of it
> comes from the grants awarded as a result of our work as students and
> researchers.
>
> Being a treasurer for undergraduate student groups, you can understand
> how this might be a valid concern for me even though I'm not an
> undergraduate. I, for one, would prefer to get a lot more than $10
> from the UA, and I'm not sure to what extent Creighton and Brar will
> be able to rise to this expectation. I believe that a person's vote
> should be worth a lot more than $10 if you think about the amount of
> money the UA controls every semester. If a candidate wants to declare
> "Sure, let's just divide the entire UA budget among the students!"
> I'd be ecstatic, but they better have a better way of distributing
> that instead of sitting in Lobby 10...because then I'd then have to
> increase the dues for the groups of which I'm managing the finances,
> and collect each one individually. That just sucks for me.
>
> This, of course, comes in addition to the concerns you have mentioned,
> which are certainly valid. Do you believe that Creighton and Brar will
> be able to _effectively_ represent your views as an undergraduate to
> the rest of MIT?
>
> I just mentioned Yoon's record to show how it's not necessarily a good
> idea to discount a candidate based on taste by automatically assuming
> that a non-EC resident wouldn't be interested in the same things EC
> people are interested in, and vice versa. I was picking out a tiny
> little point in the email, yes, but none of the candidates just talk
> about social events in their platform and I think it would be
> similarly unfair to state that any of the candidates are simply
> interested in organizing social events.
>
> Philip Tan
> -----------
> "Stupidity is like nuclear power: it can be used for good or evil.
> And you don't want to get any of it on you." - Wally & Dilbert
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