http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/15684/

Quote:The African, Latino, Asian, Native American Students Intercultural Programming Board at Cornell University wasted, overspent and even “lost” tens of thousands of dollars during the last school year, but attempts to cut its budget because of the mismanagement were labeled discriminatory and insensitive – and ultimately defeated.

Despite the mismanagement – in which ALANA spent lavishly to fund sparsely attended events that cost as much as $90 per person, used $5,600 to help host a LGBTQ dance party that included go-go dancers and drag queen performers, and allegedly “lost” 8,000 – the group’s funding will remain level.

The Student Assembly voted in early December to give ALANA, an umbrella organization for about 50 multicultural and minority student groups, about $108,000 for the 2014-16 school years, down only slightly from its 2012-14 budget of $118,000.

The move is a reversal of a November decision by the student government’s appropriations committee to slash the group’s budget by nearly $25,000, and comes on the heels of outcries of discrimination and unfairness.

For example, Cornell alum and former ALANA President Yizary Polanco said in an email to students that cutting the budget represented Cornell’s inability to appreciate “the beauty of a growing diverse community.”

But in explaining the rationale behind the cuts at a Nov. 21 meeting, appropriations committee members said ALANA had lost approximately $8,000–there was no record of where it had been spent.

Beyond this, the organization overspent on programming, even by the standards of its own constitution, which states no more than $1,000 may be allocated to an event per sponsoring organization. But at least one event, Filthy/Gorgeous, a yearly dance party put on by the LGBTQ group Haven, received as much as $5,600, records show.

Even when this cap wasn’t broken, ALANA still broke the Student Assembly-recommended funding limit of $10 per attending student: ALANA’s events averaged out to $23 per student, with some events, including banquets, costing as much as $92 a head. What’s more, many of these events drew minimal interest from students, who pay $229 annually in mandatory student fees.

As if all that wasn’t wasteful enough, the group threw away $450 for pins for the executive board.

Initially, student government members stood firm on their decision to slash the group’s budget. Even the notoriously left-leaning Cornell Daily Sun published an editorial which said calling the cuts anti-diversity was “a shameless emotional smokescreen that skirts the real issue.”

But fear not controversy seekers, for the drama does not end there.

After the decision, Sun student columnist Bailey Dineen (who prefers the pronoun “they” and helps lead the LGBTQ group Haven) decried the very structure of the appropriations process, stating the student government’s expectations of ALANA to follow its own bylaws and make sensible spending decisions “were made and applied without being sensitive to the needs of cultural umbrella and programming organizations like ALANA.”

“Our budgets are reflections of the vast realities of our missions,” Dineen stated. “Our operations are necessary to the safety of a large portion of the student body, and to expect us to adhere to the same guidelines that regulate byline-funded groups like the Slope Day Programming Board or Athletics and Physical Education is absurd.”

more

That is ridiculous. Not only should the funding have been cut, but the program should have been put on probation. You "lose" money again and the program is cut. This has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, diversity and everything to do with money. If you can't manage the money properly, you can't have it.

If Ezra Cornell (died 1874) could only see his little college now...

(12-19-2013 04:49 PM)EpicNiner Wrote:  That is ridiculous. Not only should the funding have been cut, but the program should have been put on probation. You "lose" money again and the program is cut. This has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, diversity and everything to do with money. If you can't manage the money properly, you can't have it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can't you see you're the problem here? You come in w/ your patriarchal, cisgendered, normative accounting practices, and impose them on everyone else?

For shame.

These people are providing diversity to the campus from the most fundamental levels. Even in the way they run their organization, even in the way that they do arithmetic!

(12-19-2013 05:07 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  

(12-19-2013 04:49 PM)EpicNiner Wrote:  That is ridiculous. Not only should the funding have been cut, but the program should have been put on probation. You "lose" money again and the program is cut. This has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, diversity and everything to do with money. If you can't manage the money properly, you can't have it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can't you see you're the problem here? You come in w/ your patriarchal, cisgendered, normative accounting practices, and impose them on everyone else?

For shame.

These people are providing diversity to the campus from the most fundamental levels. Even in the way they run their organization, even in the way that they do arithmetic!

I can't help but to laugh at how ridiculous that sounds!

"“Our budgets are reflections of the vast realities of our missions,” Dineen stated. “Our operations are necessary to the safety of a large portion of the student body, and to expect us to adhere to the same guidelines that regulate byline-funded groups like the Slope Day Programming Board or Athletics and Physical Education is absurd.”"

Some animals are more equal than others..

(12-19-2013 05:07 PM)DrTorch Wrote:  

(12-19-2013 04:49 PM)EpicNiner Wrote:  That is ridiculous. Not only should the funding have been cut, but the program should have been put on probation. You "lose" money again and the program is cut. This has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, diversity and everything to do with money. If you can't manage the money properly, you can't have it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Can't you see you're the problem here? You come in w/ your patriarchal, cisgendered, normative accounting practices, and impose them on everyone else?

For shame.

These people are providing diversity to the campus from the most fundamental levels. Even in the way they run their organization, even in the way that they do arithmetic!

cisgendered ... had to look that one up.

(12-19-2013 10:59 PM)Bull_In_Exile Wrote:  Some animals are more equal than others..

The continuing force and relevance of Orwell's writing, more than six decades after his death, is a testament to his greatness.

Today, he is viewed (more-or-less) as a politically neutral figure who smiles benevolently on all sides of the debate in Britain, America, Canada, etc. But oh, how he was hated in his time! And even after he was gone, there was a leftwing critic of his (Mary McCarthy) who said it was just as well he died so young (46), since if he had lived, he might not have taken the "anti-war" side of the Vietnam debate. (Better dead than anti-Red, after all).

Don't disagree with either of your points, NG, but that's kind of my point. As long as the choices are Obamacare or hating poor people, republicans are in a no win situation. I think part of the problem is that there are a lot of republican ideas but no republican plan. Talk to 20 different republicans and you might get 20 different plans. That was the beauty of Newt's Contract. He got republicans united behind one set of policy goals.