LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Proposed activity tax an asinine ploy to swindle paying students

One of the principal roles of CSO is to fairly allocate funds to the various student organizations. However, as revealed in the November 4 SGA University Wide Meeting, CSO wants to take those funds back, in what it calls an “activity charge.” What I call an “involvement tax.”

Essentially, members of clubs would be charged a fee to host events. I have never heard anything more asinine.

For starters, the SGA and CSO constitutions only give them the authority to allocate funds, not impose fees. Second, it is explicitly illegal under Florida Law to charge students to participate in an event funded by A&S fees.

According to Sanjeev Udhnani, the “involvement tax” would save SGA money during the budget deliberations in the Spring semester. He also stated that USF and FSU allow their clubs to charge fees.

However when I contacted the CSO equivalents at USF (Center for Student Involvement) and FSU (Student Activities Center), I was told that in no uncertain terms were Udhnani’s statements true. I checked the statutes of both universities – they clearly say that clubs funded in part or whole by A&S Fees could not charge students for entry into events or for membership in the club. Also, neither council charges any kind of an “involvement tax.”

In addition, if there were funds leftover in the CSO budget, it would be put into the ACB account managed by Student Affairs Vice President Rosa Jones, which is difficult for SGA to use. So I can only assume Udhnani was mistaken when he spoke at the November 4 meeting.

More alarming however, is the extreme secrecy in which CSO advisor Ayana Wilson and President Elizabeth Fava have taken in planning this proposal. If you examine the CSO executive minutes, which are more accurately called agendas due to their inexcusable lack of information, you will not find any mention of this proposal. (The “minutes” simply list the topics each executive member spoke about, but do not give any information about what was actually said.)

I demand to know why CSO is purposefully omitting information about such a drastic policy from their minutes. If this “involvement tax” proposal was being discussed in other meetings, why were they not advertised and made open to the public as required by Sunshine Law?

I don’t know why CSO wants to start charging students to host events, nor do I care why. CSO is a unique organization in that its budget can never be affected by the budget cuts facing education in Florida. Its budget comes solely from the A&S fees, which come out of student tuition. No matter how many budget cuts there are, CSO cannot be affected.

I salute SGA for tabling the vote on the proposal until their next meeting and beg them to vote NO on this “involvement tax.” And I strongly encourage the CSO clubs to stand up to the CSO executive board on this issue. Students already pay A&S fees; they should not have to pay again.

-Ben F. Badger Jr. / CSR Director of Alumni Relations