Originally Posted by A.Marlowe

Tuition isn't a student fee. Student fees are the $1000 or so dollars we pay in addition to tuition Some of it there is no way around: building fees, administration fees, etc.

Irrelevant. My implication was obvious.

Originally Posted by A.Marlowe

Some of them are fees that arguably benefit the average student. The bus pass, the MSU fees, etc.

Others are fees that don't benefit the student, and should be removed. The CFMU fee would be an example of this. I don't know anyone who still listens to the radio, let alone a college station. Its an outdated feature, that should be removed.

I do oppose this measure, not because I'm worried about anarchy. I'm worried about tyranny of the majority, where 60% of the people can decide how everyone spends their money.

Lets just for example take the DVD referendum, and lets assume that the company was actually reputable and had a plan. If 55% of the students said they wanted an increase of 25 dollars so that we had a DVD service, would it have been fair to those others who didn't want to spend their money on DVDs?

Obviously its not a perfect comparison, but it illustrates my point. The students who would vote Yes should also be willing to donate that amount to a fund-raiser.

Cool story bro, but we live in a democracy and the tyranny of the majority is the best we got. My heart goes out to the potential minority who's 35 cents is snatched away without their consent. Actually, I hope every club holds a referendum to get their own 35 cents/student. Then maybe it'll prompt MSU to reevaluate the student fees and "trim the fat" so to say. Even in that scenario I believe this EWB fee would and should make the cut.

Originally Posted by waddlesworth

. Actually, I hope every club holds a referendum to get their own 35 cents/student. Then maybe it'll prompt MSU to reevaluate the student fees and "trim the fat" so to say. Even in that scenario I believe this EWB fee would and should make the cut.

The MSU cannot "trim the fat" by any means other then a full out referendum reaching quorum according to its constitution. Hence as mentioned earlier once these fees are on it is very difficult to remove them even if we ignore the issue of quorum(which might get solved in future years with online voting being implemented next year) because the no side will always be very strongly organized in that sense.

Originally Posted by waddlesworth

Irrelevant. My implication was obvious.

It wasn't completely obvious, some people actually do think that tuition and student fees are the same thing. Its easier just to clarify now, rather than risk a bigger misunderstanding down the line

Originally Posted by waddlesworth

Cool story bro, but we live in a democracy and the tyranny of the majority is the best we got. My heart goes out to the potential minority who's 35 cents is snatched away without their consent. Actually, I hope every club holds a referendum to get their own 35 cents/student. Then maybe it'll prompt MSU to reevaluate the student fees and "trim the fat" so to say. Even in that scenario I believe this EWB fee would and should make the cut.

And a simpler solution wouldn't be to just let people keep their money from the beginning, and distribute however much they want to whatever organizations they see fit? I just don't like "Make the problem worse, so that they're forced to address it" as a solution.

If people "gave what they wanted", it would mean that we would lose a lot of the services we have because we wouldnt have the minimum needed to fund them.

The bus passes are a good example. The gym wouldn't exist either. I wonder what would happen to the health plan. I know from personal experience, I would have had to drop out due to financial reasons this year if we didn't have the health plan.

We need to sit down and pick through the whole thing and reassess what we need. If something, like this EWB thing, benefits a large group of the students, and is available for every student to benefit from, we should consider keeping it around. If something no longer benefits students(except a select few), maybe we get rid of it for now until we can think of a better way to run it.

Well, considering the health plan is opt-out as is, only the people who need it use it. So we certainly wouldn't lose that by giving choice to people.

The bus pass is an interesting topic. There was a thread from a little while ago debating whether it should be opt-out. Consider this:

-If the majority of students (ie >50%) dislike the bus pass and would want to opt out, then clearly it is not in the best interest of the students, and shouldn't be around anyway.

-However, if the majority like the pass, and the opt-out is offered, that means at least 50% of students would not opt out, so at most the amount of money collected would be cut in half if the current price is kept.

-Since the amount needed is based on the number of students who ride the bus (unlikely to change), we can conclude that the amount needed would not be greater than double the amount collected at the current price.

-Therefore, if the bus pass was given an opt-out option, the fee per each student, at a maximum, would double.

-Double the current fee would be about $200, still a great deal for students who ride the bus regularly.

So no, by giving people a choice we would not likely lose the bus pass, as long as it benefits the majority of students. If it only benefits a minority it would be lost, but we shouldn't have had it in the first place in that case.

How an increase in gym costs would affect enrolment is much more complex, but I think its safe to say Pulse would still be cheaper than a commercial gym.

I agree though that we need to seriously reassess our current fees, but once they get added they are very hard to get rid of.

Andrew, how do you feel about the MSU funding services such as QSCC and Mac Bread Bin? Technically they are used by a minority of students, but they are incredibly valuable to the individuals that use them.

I hadn't really given them much thought because we fund them indirectly (we give the money to the MSU, the MSU gives the money to them), rather than a direct student fee.

I'd be tempted to group all MSU services together (EFRT, SHWAT, QSCC, MacGreen, Mac Bread Bin, 1280, Union Market, etc) and say that the majority of students benefit from the existence of the MSU.

I guess whether the MSU as a whole is useful could be contested, but that's another discussion all together.

In the current situation, I would be for the 35c fee. That being said, I would also be for an eradication of club fees from "tuition". The mechanism is in place for clubs to receive money from the MSU. So a good solution would be to implement a set of rules for how much money the MSU Cubs section(don't touch MSU services such as dental !!) gets in the form of "tuition money", and then have clubs competing for that money. That way, we don't have random club charges in our tuition. This also allows greater organization of funds by the MSU, and less confused people. I think it would be a rather elegant solution.

We don't have random club charges in our tuition. Tuition is solely to McMaster for schooling. However, we have fees. And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I've heard from my limited dealings with the finances of an MSU club. The MSU has a set budget for all clubs. This is why every year, clubs have to reapply for club status. This ensures that the MSU will have enough money for everyone, I'm assuming, and to prevent some idiots from trying to abuse the system and possibly getting free money. I believe all clubs get a set amount (~$100?) and that's that. And $100 is perfectly fine for say, the Chinese Engineers Chess Society. But EWB needs quite a lot more money than that for their Junior Fellowship program, seeing as they do just a tiny bit more than those Chinese engineers that play chess.

Side note: those EWB referendum posters annoy me!! Why the lack of punctuation in the title?!

Yes it is true each MSU club gets around $100-$200 per year from the MSU (including EWB) but there is a stipulation attached to this funding...it cannot be spent "outside" McMaster community by the club. Meaning that currently None of what we recieve from MSU can even go to the JF program..it can in a roundabout way..like using the $ towards hosting a fundraiser by EWB @ Mac for the JF.

However, fundraisers ofter turn into awareness days for us at times, an example was a fundraiser we had with something called the treadle pump, after days of planning and effort we raised a whopping $16...its better than nothing but still it shows why/how fundraising isn't always a reliable strategy

what I was getting at is lumping all the extra "fees" that we pay with our tuition into one happy sum, together with the current "inhouse" MSU funds. Then clubs should maybe apply for "special funds" that require some kind of MSU approval. These could be vaild for x amount of years. Then the special funding is revised. Better than the current way( funds getting stale), also allowing greater MSU control and better redistribution.

Of course if a club doesn't get ratified next year, special funds are canceled.

I'm not sure if one happy sum would really be that happy at all... if there are irresponsible people dealing with that sum one year, all the clubs would just get screwed over. A special funds area would either be underused or abused. Plus, with all the administrative stuff, it's likely a multiple year thing would just be a giant headache or impossible overall because of the high turnover. Then clubs would have to apply every year, which creates a lot more paperwork and work and it's just ugly.

Though that's my take on it.

yes, but if you consider the facts, they kinda have an anti-abuse system in place, and most of your concerns are addressed:

- clubs have to fill out budgets anyway, an extra section of the budget dedicated to the "special" section shouldn't be too much more paperwork\
- there already is a probationary period for clubs, this could have something to the same effect
- hard to abuse because a budget is done by refund, not by giving clubs money to spend
- could somewhat easily implement a fund-raising ratio scheme: special funds = base amount + money raised by club the year before * 1.5 (just an example)
- there's a committee of people who ratify clubs and budgets, this is just another item
- there is pre-exsisting data from the current clubs on how much they actually need
- high turnover: if a club is younger than a year, you can't have special funding, etc.


Obviously the details are a bit of work, there are definite advantages to having a set sum of money that clubs can compete for(as I said above). Could even have one big SRA meeting at the beginning of the year to decide which clubs get what percentage. Or I would love to hear other suggestions. Obviously this idea of "club fees" is a bit of a problem. People don't want to see that they paid X amount of dollars to the radio for example when they don't even listen to it.

Not too familiar with how to ratify a club or do the financial parts because I've never done it, so I'll just skip over those parts. No response is a good response, right?

Though, I'm not too sure about what you mean by an extra section of the budget dedicated to the special section. Do you mean clubs should have a special project accomplished only with the special fund? Because that's a bit... not effective.

I think you're also assuming that clubs need more money than what the MSU gives them. I'm pretty sure most clubs are fine with the ~$100, because they don't have the same international scope as EWB. Not to rag on the multitudes of Chinese _____ Societies, but they likely only need $100 in a given year to do whatever it is to do, but EWB has their Junior Fellowship, high school outreach, etc. which is considerably more finance-intensive than having a bunch of people meet in a room every week to discuss a topic.

Additionally, if this "special" fund is implemented as "club money" that functions like how Meaghan was describing (can only be spent in the McMaster community), then EWB wouldn't even be able to use it for their JF program. And if it's like a refund, then that just puts pressure on the club members' wallets.

With regards to high turnover, I meant more that students in the committees and clubs and various other positions in the MSU are only obligated to stay on for one year (or less, if they feel like quitting midway). Though to be honest, I'm not sure what my point was with that anyway.

While I'm thinking of it, your big lump sum idea sounds more like MAClab or Ash's endowment fund idea, but just applied to clubs. To be perfectly honest, I stand by my statement that most clubs do just fine with their current MSU money. If there really is a demand for such a fund, maybe it should be looked into, but I'm just not convinced that other clubs have such a need for money currently that can't be covered by the MSU money or sponsorships that they can get (fundraising is not the most efficient way of raising funds, contrary to popular belief).

Originally Posted by Iman

Not too familiar...popular belief).

Sorry, from what you said, it seems I'm not making myself too clear. Trying to do several assignments at the same time

Here is what I envision:
You have a normal club that just got ratified this year. They go about normal club activities, they are not eligible to have anything to do with the "special money" let's call it. A set amount of years pass. They are now eligible for "special money". This money can be used by the club, but anywhere they like, it can go towards anything the club needs.

How much money does the club get? You can apply different formulas, but for example, you can have the following scheme:
1st year of "special money" = 1.2 * previous year's earnings(not income, earnings)
2nd year = 1.5 * ...
3rd year = 2*...
4th and older = 3*...

obviously the actual formula would be different, this is just an example. If a club doesn't need the money one year, it is rolled over to next year. A cap can be put on that so that clubs need to use the money.

How to apply for this money: you make an extra "special section" in the yearly budget submission.


Anyway, I think that I agree with you in the fact that most clubs don't need this. So the fact that very few clubs would go for this "special money" pretty simple. The current system would benefit from this simplicity.