'Better to tread water than to drown'

We were there for the first forum, the one with only one student in the audience as well as one of the final forums yesterday.

Starting when former Cal Poly Provost Robert Koob proposed it in November, the Mustang Daily has closely followed the Student Success Fee.

We’ve met with Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong, associate vice provost Kimi Ikeda, Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) president Kiyana Tabrizi numerous times, spoken with students and attempted to poll the rest. We’ve also debated within our own staff — which includes everything from biomedical engineering to art and design majors.

Ten articles and numerous discussions later, Mustang Daily has chosen to endorse the Student Success Fee.

What we’ve found through our careful coverage is a complicated issue filled with “what ifs” and uncertainties — unknowns that eliminate the simplicity of cut-and-dry decision making. In the end, we felt the need to fulfill our role as the voice of the students — this is why we are endorsing it.

The Student Success Fee is a necessary evil in a time of budget cuts and decreased state funding. Despite the knee-jerk reaction to an added fee — one that appeared to be a public relations stint capitalizing on the positive sound of “student success” — we’ve come to realize it has potential. The fee has the potential to maintain Cal Poly’s standards of education for current and future students, despite the cuts.

That said, this wasn’t an easy decision to make. It was a result of a careful deliberation among our entire staff, who brought their own pros and cons. As is the truth with any complicated issue, we found that none of the staff was 100 percent in favor of or against the fee. In the end though, we found the majority of staff were leaning toward supporting the fee, rather than hoping for the best by voting it down.

Our reasons for supporting the fee were summed up the best by one of our copy editors, Hannah Croft: “In all cases, it is better to tread water than to drown.”

Although administration seems to have high hopes for it, the Student Success Fee isn’t going to fix Cal Poly’s budgetary constrictions overnight — it’s a quick fix meant to maintain the status quo.

According to Ikeda, the fee will bring in $8 million at its start in Fall 2012, but that would only supplement a portion of Cal Poly’s estimated $11 million deficit for that quarter. Yes, the fee will bring in more money over time, and in three years, it could bring in approximately $14 million.

But who’s to say that $14 million will still be enough? In the light of frequent funding cuts, it is quite possible Cal Poly’s deficit will be even greater by that time, making the $14 million a moot point.

Naysayers of the fee may say that since it will not actually fix the issue right now, why bother voting for it at all? But as Croft said, it’s always better to tread water and attempt to start fixing the money issues now, rather than drown by just waiting to see what will happen.

Another con we touched on throughout our coverage is the lack of certainty on where exactly the money from this fee will go.

At the forums, Ikeda tossed around the possibility of more classes and faculty, funds to go toward improving diversity, preserving Learn By Doing and other ambiguous phrases that sounded good next to “student success.”

But in truth, nobody knows exactly what these fees will go to. Ikeda herself said administration is hesitant to specifically denote fee distribution. Point being, they haven’t even decided specifically what parts of Cal Poly need funding the most. Until the fee committee meets, we’re all in the dark when it comes to where the money will go.

This makes some hesitant to place that much trust in a system that has a history of implementing vague fees — College Based Fees come to mind immediately.

In 2002, Cal Poly voted to implement College Based Fees, setting them apart from the rest of the CSUs. These fees were meant to go toward different scholastic pursuits — everything from new science labs to student trips — but since budget cuts have come into play, these have become devoted almost entirely to maintaining class sizes and offerings, as well as staff and faculty payment.

How College Based Fees are split up is vague at best, and depends on the specific colleges’ discretion. Over time, the funds for this fee have moved from extra money that enables Cal Poly students to do bigger and better things, to money used to maintain the status quo — exactly what the Student Success Fee is proposed to do. This has prompted students to ask if over time the Student Success Fee will undergo a similar transformation in where the funds are allocated as well.

Although for now we have chosen to support the Student Success Fee in spite of these uncertainties, we will be diligent in the future to monitor how these funds are spent. We promise our readers that the first time the fee funds are misused, we will be there to cover it.

That being said, if and/or when a penny is pushed in the wrong direction, we will need to revert back to the promises made against spending the money on administrative pay and other such costs. Those who do vote in favor tomorrow need to help hold the committee responsible — hold their feet to the fire to ensure proper allocating of the fee monies.

Our endorsement fully hinges on the fact that we trust the fee committee will not knowingly abuse its power.

Now come the questions of what will happen in the future, the largest of which is what will happen if we support this fee now. Will the CSU system look at Cal Poly and say, “Oh those students at Cal Poly are all OK with more fees, so let’s keep tacking these on?” On the other hand, we might be showing the state we are taking our education into our own hands when the state won’t support us like it should.

We hope for Cal Poly’s sake it is the latter, because without significant change in California’s support (or lack thereof) of higher education, we will continue to tread water with these sorts of fees until we eventually are so exhausted, we have no choice but to drown.