The Cavalier daily :: Wednesday, February 28, 1973 :: University of Virginia Library

With the initial results of
the Student Council's "Student
Opinion Survey" due to be
released Tuesday, its potential
effects are still widely
unknown. While the
acceptability of the Student
Activities Fee is not questioned
by the survey, the present
distribution of the funds
gained from the fee comes
under scrutiny.

According to Student
Council Vice President Larry
Sabato, "The philosophy
behind a student activities fund
is to provide a reservoir of
funds which will be readily
available for students to use in
extra-curricular activities. The
basic merit of the fund rests on
the fact that student
organizations thereby know,
provided they fulfill a number
of criteria, that they will have a
solid financial base from which
to plan and operate.

'Service To The Students'

"Therefore the fund
provides not only a means for
students to participate in
extracurricular activities," he
continued, "but also a service to
the students."

Allocations of the fund are
determined, or refused, by the
Organizations and Publications
Committee of the Student
Council, which Mr. Sabato
chairs.

Of the $182 comprehensive
fee paid annually by every
student only $12 of that sum is
allocated to the Student
Activities Fee. With that $12
per student, or $150,000 total,
the Student Council allocates
funds to over 90 student
organizations.

The largest proportion of
that total, 39 per cent, goes to
the Publications and Radio
Category, which includes
WTJU, WUVA, The Cavalier
Daily and the Virginia Law
Review, among others.

Community service groups
receive the next highest
percentage (21.4 per cent),
with club sports, academic and
speaker organizations, as well
as interest-oriented equal
opportunity and musical
groups receiving the rest of the
funds. These are the eight
categories, each with a specific
fund celling, through which
Student Council determines
allocation distribution.

Despite recent criticism,
Mr. Sabato claims, "This is the
best fee we pay, for we get
more from it than any other."
The fact is, without that fee
(and there are factions in the
University who seek to abolish
it) extra-curricular activities
would virtually disappear.

In an attempt to inject the
two-week herculean task of
determining "what
organizations get how much"
with a bit more efficiency, Mr.
Sabato has recently conducted
a mild purge of the procedure.
Student Council has altered the
procedure of and affixed a
specific time limit to the fund
hearings at which each
organization requests
appropriations.

'One More Attempt'

Council classified all
student organizations into the
eight groups mentioned above.
The questionnaire, mailed to
seven per cent of all students,
is one more attempt to
upgrade the funding
procedures.

As the first serious attempt
to gage student sentiment on
O&P's allocations, the 11-page
questionnaire suffers from
some inherent drawbacks, the
most obvious being its long and
comprehensive nature. Mr.
Sabato, author and originator
of the survey, admits "the
whole thing is so damn long
and complicated, and there is
so much one has to know
(about student organizations)
to intelligently answer the poll,
that it is going to be difficult
to get a sufficient response
rate."

Student Indifference

Asst. Sociology Prof.
Charles Longino, who acted as
advisor for the poll believes the
poll was a "good one." He
thinks a 60 per cent return
would be a low range
acceptability level, while an 85
percent return on the
questionnaire would be
exceptional.

Mr. Longino, strangely
enough, also thinks the survey
is long and complicated. The
majority of students don't

CD/Saxon Holt

Council V.P. Larry Sabato

really care a great deal about
the funding, he said.
Consequently they will feel
imposed upon to sit down for
half an hour and fill it out.

Mr. Sabato said, though, that
he has at present a 65 per cent
return on the questionnaire. Of
the 924 questionnaires
distributed, among a 12,000
student population, 600 returns
would hardly, in itself, be a
definitive indicator of student
opinion. The questionnaires,
though, are to be run through
a computer at Gilmer Hall and
weighted in proportion to the
composition of the student
body.

What Student Council
intends to do with the results
of the survey exposes further
inherent drawbacks. Since it is
necessary for a student to have
a reasonably sound
knowledge of various
University activities to
intelligently answer the
questionnaire, (a knowledge
that is doubted to a certain
degree even by the survey's
originators) it is difficult to
determine how confidently
Student Council should act on
the results. Indeed, just what
amount of discretion the
Council will use in evaluating
the results of the survey is still
in question.

Student Input Needed

Mr. Sabato thinks "at the
heart of the present discontent
over Student Activities
funding rests the fact that
students don't feel they have a
direct input into the use of the
fee.

"The questionnaire is a
good way to get a handle on
student opinion," he said, "and
to find out exactly what the
Student Council should be
representing." Therefore
students are asked in the
survey to give their opinions of
the fund ceilings recently
imposed by Council on the
eight organization categories.

They may also recommend
ten organizations they would

(Continued on page 4)