This winter break, the Leonard Carmichael Society's Volunteer Vacations (VV) program is sending 100 Tufts students and ten alums to Waveland, Pass Christian, and Bay St. Louis, Mississippi to perform hurricane relief.
This is the first year that VV has taken on a trip of this magnitude, and also the first time that we have been overwhelmed with interested participants. In past years, we have had to beg for students to take part in the trips. This year, student enthusiasm was overwhelming.
LCS' role within the university is to provide opportunities for students to take part in activities which impact their communities; VV's response to the biggest natural disaster in America's recent history is more than appropriate. This year's VV trip requires more funding than it does during an average year, but this is a potentially life changing opportunity for 110 people to truly make an impact in an area of the country that so desperately needs our resources. Not only will this trip benefit the participants and the Mississippi residents whose homes we will rebuild, but it will also serve as amazing publicity for Tufts as an institution. As far as we know, we are the only university organizing a trip of this scale to provide direct aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina. This trip is an amazing endeavor, and VV has met with incredible support both financially and morally from many figureheads, departments, and organizations at this University. Because of this eagerness to help, the trip to Mississippi will happen, and successfully.
The only organization that seems uninterested in supporting VV is the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate Allocations Board (ALBO). As one of the trip's coordinators, I along with one of the LCS presidents, Erin Poth, have gone to two allocations board meetings to petition for funds. We've met with an extremely negative response, and have received $0 from ALBA's discretionary $50,000 buffer fund budget. My understanding of buffer funding is that it is a pool of money which exists to support student activities that go above and beyond their expected budgets; this year's VV trip does just that. As rational for ALBA's denial of funding for VV, I was told that the TCU buffer funding is meant for student activities which occur on campus and benefit a large number of students. It was explained to me that the VV trip not only takes place off campus, but is limited in impact to just 100 students.
I am sorely disappointed with the way that ALBO chooses to allot its funding. At a university which prides itself on community engagement, this trip seems to me the epitome of all that Tufts stands for as an institution. To offer obscene amounts of money in buffer funding to events such as the Nighttime Quad Reception and offer none to Volunteer Vacations is an abomination.
I understand and respect that ALBO is governed by established guidelines and principles; but I find it appalling to sit in a room of ten of my most intelligent, ambitious peers and realize that they are more guided by the TCU rulebook than by the values that I would expect they hold personally.
Call me idealistic, but I would hope that the TCU Senate would not mirror the conservative American government. Sure, I'm just a liberal community health major here, but it seems to me a little crazy to be stingy about funding 'social programs' and have no issue writing ridiculously large checks for causes that have no profound impact on really...anyone. Don't get me wrong - I love events like the Nighttime Quad Reception and the Mr. Jumbo competition as much as any other Tufts student - but like most students, faculty, and administration, I consider programs like Volunteer Vacations to be of much higher value. I would have hoped that ALBA's decisions would appropriately reflect Tufts' general values.
Considering that ALBA is the only organization on campus that has the sole function of funding student activities, it is their duty to make moral decisions. I am appalled by the principles guiding the TCU Senate Allocations Board members, and would hope that in the future they reconsider how and why they make choices not just as Board members, but as people.
