Who Will Watch the Watchers?

Recent changes to make the May 8 Funding at Columbia University (FaCU) meeting more transparent aim to ensure that student leaders are held to higher standards in allocating funds to the University’s governing boards. The undergraduate student councils of Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of General Studies, and Barnard College were right to open the FaCU process to public viewers. Nonetheless, limitations placed on those in attendance speak to an undue degree of sensitivity to public criticism.

The FaCU process doles out close to $800,000 in student-life fees to the five governing boards—the Activities Board at Columbia, the Club Sports Governing Board, Community Impact, the Inter-Greek Council, and the Student Governing Board. Long held behind closed doors, the daylong meeting will be open to the public this year pursuant to a decision by the FaCU committee, composed of the outgoing and incoming president and treasurer of each council. The meeting will be taped and available to watch online, and so-called silent observers will be allowed to sit in on as many segments of the proceedings as they wish. Despite these reforms, however, silent observers are subject to a number of guidelines that call into question the student councils’ commitment to transparency. Though not required to attend the marathon meeting in its entirety, attendees must stay for the duration of any portion they choose to attend, and the whole audience will be dismissed if even a single observer “speaks out repeatedly.” Equally troubling is the directive that reporters cannot publish stories on the event until budgetary numbers are officially approved by the student councils—while this is understood as nonbinding in practice, including such a mandate seems inane. While the numbers will not yet be official, reporters will still want to describe the meeting—especially since the process itself has drawn much criticism before.

On the whole, the new measures are significant steps for a process traditionally shrouded in secrecy. By opening proceedings to the public, the councils have made themselves more accountable for allocation decisions while giving the student body a clearer sense of where student-life fees go. Moreover, public discussion will impel student leaders to provide reasonable explanations for the allocations they make and undercut accusations that politics plays a role in the allotment of funds across the governing boards. At a minimum, the four councils must ensure that, unlike in past years, they all issue public explanations of the allocations in an expedient manner. Ideally, the FaCU committee will also publicize its accounting and spending standards to better streamline the process. In light of this desire to be more transparent, the councils should better publicize their own significant budgets.

The recent changes to the FaCU process represent potentially one of the most important decisions made by student council in recent history. Nonetheless, the restrictions imposed on silent observers, particularly those prohibiting them from publishing articles or talking about the meeting until all numbers are approved, suggest that the councils are overly concerned with their public image. Council leaders argue that these restrictions are needed to prevent observers from taking their statements out of context. But the risk of misinterpretation does not justify a vow of silence. Committee members who act according to guidelines and without succumbing to favoritism should have few qualms about their presentation by the media. Regardless, at the end of the day, elected officials must accept the reality that some of their deliberations may be misconstrued or mischaracterized. The proper recourse is not prior restraint but the public record. Should the FaCU committee be unfairly criticized, it can counter false allegations by pointing to the taped recording of the proceedings—a by-product of the very transparency that has given the councils pause.

The changes made to this year’s FaCU process are welcome ones, but the hurdles that remain are ill-conceived. Come what may, the councils should let students draw their own conclusions from the deliberations, rather than try to manage public perceptions. Transparency should be a tool rather than a threat to student leaders, who, if they are making fair decisions, should have no objection to unqualified public scrutiny.

Grace Chan recused herself from the writing of this editorial.