Word: referendums
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...Faculty Council on Wednesday approved the student body’s vote in a referendum two weeks ago to raise the optional Student Activities Fee to $75 from its current...
...began with the simple word “believe” and ended with an invented mandate. While the recent referendum on increasing the Student Activities Fee for the Undergraduate Council did, indeed, pass, its low turnout and close outcome present serious concern...
These concerns, I feel, are three-fold. First and foremost, I am concerned by the low turnout and extremely narrow margin of passage that the first question of the referendum yielded. According to the official results, only 35 percent of the student body voted in the referendum, and the fee increase from $35 to $75 was passed by the margin of 53.2 percent to 46.8 percent (1,189 votes for, 1,046 against...
Secondly, while the referendum may have been passed by a majority of those who voted, the harm that this increase is likely to have on those who did not support it is likely to far outweigh the benefits to those who did support it. From conversations that I have had, it is clear that many students are not themselves largely responsible for paying their term bills (due to parents covering the costs and so on). For them there is no downside to increasing the fee, as the increase may yield marginal benefits to them. Therefore, they have every incentive...
...increase its budget to allow for greater funding of campus events and student group activities, increasing the fee by such a large amount (more than doubling it) may actually defeat the goal that it hopes to accomplish. As the extremely close results of the referendum show, many students are not in favor of such an increase. While many may happily support the current $35 activities fee, increasing it to $75 will likely cause many to opt out of its payment. The result would be both a sense of alienation among students and a significant decrease in council revenue. Although revenue...