A bill that would require students to request special fees in person at the Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) office rather than online, introduced in the ASSU Undergraduate Senate on Tuesday, was retracted over the weekend in a series of efforts to reform special fees funding for student groups.
The withdrawn bill, which had not been vetted by SSE or the Graduate Student Council (GSC), was part of an effort to combat the recent trend of increased requests for refunds.
“Refunds were skyrocketing,” said Senate Chair Michael Cruz ’12, reflecting on changes last year to the special fees process.
While statistics for this quarter’s refunds are not yet available, the numbers for refunds per quarter for the past four quarters have been the following: spring 2010, 959 requests, totaling $99,776 with 322 full refunds; winter 2010, 1,132 requests, totaling $115,794 with 379 full refunds; fall 2009, 788 requests, totaling $79,604 with 248 full refunds; spring 2009, 886 requests, totaling $82,355 with 284 full refunds.
Students request special fees refunds online, filling out a form that gives them the option to request a refund from all or some student groups receiving special fees. (The Daily is one of those groups.) Groups may deny their services to students who refund money from them.
Friday marked the end of the two-week-long period during which students could request refunds for fall quarter. The 11th Undergraduate Senate in February shortened this period from three weeks.
In part due to this change, special fees refunds declined slightly between winter and spring 2010, though the refund rate remained the second-highest in three years, behind winter 2010, suggesting the baseline for special fees refunds increased significantly over the preceding years.
Last year, the special fees rate per quarter per student was $119. This year, the student activities fee is $111. During the 2009-2010 academic year, students were overcharged by $14, and subsequently refunded, due to an accounting mistake that provided groups who had not passed the funding process with funds.
ASSU has taken a three-pronged approach to the issue of special fees, Cruz said.
Last year, the focus rested on controlling the special fees rate. This year, the ASSU has decided to continue this reform by improving awareness among students about the refund process and attempting to decrease the number of refund requests.
Requiring students to request refunds in person would help change what Appropriations Committee Chair Rafael Vasquez ’12 described as a “free-rider system,” under which students could request refunds for non-financial or moral reasons but still benefit from student group services.
Cruz, one of the bill’s authors, said the bill was withdrawn because “various members of the association…decided the best way to affect the refund problem is through the technological side rather than through legislation.”
Vasquez, expressing his disappointment, suggested the withdrawal might have been a result of discussions with SSE.
Senator Rebecca Sachs ‘13, one of the most critical voices of the bill at Tuesday’s Senate meeting, was relieved to hear of the bill’s withdrawal, which had not been publicized on Senate e-mail lists as of Sunday evening.
“I can’t imagine 800 people lining up in SSE to get their money back,” said Sachs, commenting on her experience as a financial officer for a student group.
“We want to make the [refund] process difficult on some level, but this infringed on their privacy by making students go into SSE,” Sachs said.
Correction: today’s print edition incorrectly reported the refund period this quarter was a week long. As the online version correctly reports, the period is two weeks long.