Student (non)-involvement in budgeting

At our meeting last October when we adopted the final City College budget for 2009-2010, a number of students spoke to our Board about how eliminating the summer session would be harmful to their educational plans. In addition to the reality of facing another semester or two at City College before being able to transfer, many of these students complained that they had been unaware that the Administration had proposed cutting summer classes as a budget saving measure.

There are three or so student representatives to the College's Planning and Budgeting Council ("PBC"), the Shared Governance entity responsible for developing, approving, and recommending the budget to the Board of Trustees. How -- or if -- these students confer with student leaders and the Associated Students is unclear. Is there a robust exchange of information within the student body about the College's budget, the result of which is a true integration of student needs and desires into what the College offers in its educational and support programs? It would seem unlikely that this happens in any more that a scattered way, and that's unfortunate.

While we were listening to students complain about their lack of involvement in planning and budgeting at City College, I felt frustrated that these students were finally showing up to a College Board meeting to talk to us. Where had they been all year? With an enrollment of over 100,000 students each year, surely there are 100 or so who have the time, interest, and passion to challenge the Board of Trustees -- the elected representatives of the public -- to have a clear understanding of how the College fulfills its mission and to be able to document how they, as the Board, are serving the needs of students.

Yet, extraordinarily few students come to the College Board meetings, almost no students advocate for anything in front of the Board, and shared governance spots reserved for students often remain unfilled. I know that hearing from students would be a powerful and effective way to create change at City College; however, either by design or by history, students and the Board of Trustees have a pretty much non-existent relationship. That is a wasted opportunity for both.

At our monthly meeting last week, Chancellor Griffin noted that students want to have more involvement in the budget process and pledged to making that happen. He did not get into specifics, however. Student leaders should seize the opportunity to develop a structure for student involvement in planning and budgeting, and should present this to the College Board at our next meeting in February.