Competitive Academic Groups Ask For Funds

They researched. They practiced. They pounced on their opponents and won a bid to the national championship. But unless the Mock Trial Team acquires additional funding soon, they won't be representing Columbia in Des Moines, Iowa come April.

The Mock Trial team's precarious position indicates a larger funding problem affecting all student groups. Student leaders of several Columbia academic teams say the problems are not unique to Mock Trial, either.

Student leaders on the Activities Board at Columbia, Columbia College Student Council, and the Engineering Student Council have taken notice of the teams' complaints have formed a committee to investigate these issues. They will eventually propose a new funding formula for competition groups to the administration.

Competitive groups include Mock Trial, Parliamentary Debate, Policy Debate, Individual Events Speech Team, Quiz Bowl, Model United Nations, Model European Union, and Model Congress. They vary in their focus, number of competitions, and membership numbers.

According to the ABC's web site, initial allocation funds for these groups this year ranged from $400.50 for Model Congress to $7,182 for Parliamentary Debate. ABC President Ishwara Glassman, CC '02, said the ABC allocates funds for the groups based on relative expenses. For example, the board compares how much it costs one group to get to Boston as opposed to another. The size of a group's membership is also considered.

Travel counts for the largest expense associated with the cost of these programs. According to guidelines set by the ABC constitution, the board will not fund more than 50 percent of these expenses, which is an obstacle to teams whose activities necessitate travel.

Team Struggles with Travel and Compensation Expenses

For the Mock Trial team, the lack of available funding has increased in urgency as they rise up the ranking ladder. Now in its fourth year, the program has seen a substantial increase in its membership, coaching staff, and national prestige--the team receives more than fifty e-mails a year from prospective students whose choice of a college is connected to the strength of the Mock Trial program.

The group regularly attends one or two invitational tournaments, the regional tournament, and the national tournament, for which they have qualified every year of their existence.

In January, the organization sent one of its teams to an invitational tournament at Northwestern where they placed first. Treasurer Shira Feldman, CC '04, received an Outstanding Attorney Award (Prosecution) and vice president Laura Ingman, CC '04, earned an Outstanding Witness Award (Prosecution). The team and volunteer coaches personally covered the entire cost of attending the competition. Feldman estimated the expense at $400 per person. The team worries about making members pay their own way because it precludes students from joining who cannot afford to do so.

Last week the Mock Trial team submitted a funding appeal, which the ABC accepts for unforeseen events to cover the costs of their regional tournaments. They requested $7610 and were granted $1080, said Mock Trial President Wyatt Lipman, CC '04. The team understands the financial constraints facing the ABC yet feels that those circumstances do not make the team's situation any more acceptable, Ingman said.

The ABC is accepting appeals until Feb. 25 for this semester. The Mock Trial team put in an appeal Monday for the National Championship, which includes a request for airfare to Des Moines for 11 people. They are concurrently pursuing other funding venues including the Columbia College Administration, the Law School, the Provost's Initiative Fund, and outside sources.

The team has attempted to raise funds outside the University. Founding member Andrew Solomon, CC '02, said that last year in response to over 400 letters they received only three replies. "It's very difficult to convince a law firm that we come from Columbia, one of the finest and wealthiest educational institutions in the country, and yet we're desperate for funding," he said.

Another impact of the funding shortage is that coaches, who donate some 10-15 hours per week, cannot be compensated. "Just seeing the team perform well [is the coaches' compensation]," said Cross, who co-founded the Mock Trial team while doing undergraduate study at Furman University in Greenville, S.C.

Just last week the Law School agreed to place Mock Trial coaching on its list of recognized activities for the 40 hours of pro bono credit that students must earn in order to graduate. But other teams do not have the same venues for compensation. The Policy Debate coach, also a law student, is not compensated and does not receive pro bono credit.

This summer, Cross's firm, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, donated $1000 to the program and continues to support the team by sending lawyers to their meetings and providing photocopies and supplies. Due to the events of Sept. 11 and the economic slump, Lipman said the team felt that it was "unrealistic to ask [firms] for money when they were laying attorneys off."

The Problems Are Not Unique To Mock Trial

The Mock Trial team's funding problems were magnified with the recent concerns about travel expenses, and other teams share those worries.

Glassman stressed the importance of student groups using their student activities money for on-campus events. When funds are used for groups to travel, she explained, less of the student life fee is being enjoyed by students on campus and "that's problematic." Hosting events on campus is one way to involve the larger community, Glassman said.

Evan Mayo-Wilson, CC '03, treasurer of Parliamentary Debate, said his team has already deposited between $25-30,000 in revenue for the year--which they use to send teams out every weekend--from the three events that they hosted on campus, which attracted around 50 universities and high schools to their respective tournaments. Parliamentary Debate decreases trip fees by staying in the dorm rooms at the host schools.

But the nature of Mock Trial and Policy Debate competitions preclude the teams from taking accommodations on campus, which the host schools almost never offer.

"Preparing anywhere from eight to 16 people for competition--going over examinations, doing a run-through the night before, waking up at 6 a.m. to get into the appropriate clothes and prepare trial materials--these things cannot be done in other students' dorm rooms, certainly not when they will be competing against us ÖThe University would never suggest that the basketball team stay with the opposing team on their campus," Lipman wrote in an e-mail.

The Policy Debate team, which travels every other week, faces the same housing difficulties.

"Housing is your own business [at tournaments]," Policy Debate treasurer Joy Su said.

Su, CC '03, said she understands that "ABC is doing their best" and that the teams have to "try their best" to find outside funding. She said Policy Debate, which currently has only four members, gains additional funding from debate coalitions in New York City. In exchange for serving as coaches in the Impact Coalition's Urban Debate program for underprivileged high schools in the city, the team gets funding for its own competitions.

Model Congress does not travel or compete, said founder and president Ilana Golant, CC '04, but instead hosts an all-day event for high school students where members serve as committee chairs. Last year the group was recognized but unfunded by the ABC and until now the fees accrued from the first conference last year have covered all costs, but if they decide to expand this year, they might have to take out a loan from ABC.

Su said every group needs vans and it might be more efficient in the long run for the school to share them with each other or with other sports groups instead of spending thousands of dollars each year renting them.

Priorities On Funding Student Groups Differ

Robyn Hartman, assistant director of Student Development and Activities, said that student leaders have not yet approached her for help with any specific proposal, but she has advised them to speak with SDA Executive Director Kevin Schollenberger to help determine which channels to go through next.

Theoretically, Hartman said, in order for specific changes to be made to how funds are allocated to competition groups, there would have to be an overhaul in the policy dictating that student groups be funded by the activities fee. Hartman said that compared to other schools, Columbia has a very large activities fee. "There is a good amount of money out there," she said.

Groups which compete in the name of Columbia deserve special recognition He said there is a "ridiculous discrepancy" between funding for athletics and competitive academic extracurricular activities.

Mock Trial Treasurer Feldman added that a school that "places a premium on academics" should directly fund programs like Mock Trial.

Cross said while competitive academic teams do not do "the same kind of work" as sports teams, their work is "intellectually difficult."

"The difference to me is that we actually win. We bring the payoff," Cross said.

Hartman said she has heard competition groups be compared to club sports and the suggestion that they be funded as such, but she said she has not heard the argument that competition groups are equivalent to varsity teams.

Student Groups Attempt to Ameliorate the Situation

Ayesha Sattar, SEAS '03, is the ABC representative for the eight competition groups and is part of the committee recently formed to investigate these funding problems. She has begun research on how these programs are funded at other schools and said that at other Ivy institutions, these groups usually receive full funding from their schools or at least have three-fourths of their travel expenses paid.

ESC Treasurer Jenny Lee, SEAS '03, said that without overstepping their bounds, the councils need to work with ABC to explore other funding methods.

"Ideally, if there was more money other than the student life fees, I would like to see the competition groups pay for less than half of their costs incurred through that channel," Lee wrote in an e-mail.

Glassman said while it's important for groups to be able to buy supplies and pay coaches, they need to make sure that if the administration becomes involved with the groups it will allow them to remain autonomous.

CCSC Vice President of Funding Colleen Hsia, CC '02, helped draft an initial outline for the structure of the committee's eventual proposal.

Hsia summed up the committee's position, saying that the competition groups deserve direct financial support from the University.

"We feel that as competition groups representing Columbia, these organizations deserve better financial support than what the ABC or the student councils can provide," Hsia wrote in an e-mail.