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The $100,000 question
Why are evening student activity fees being used to pay for day student services? Vice President Morales strong-arms student funds, buying gym equipment administrators love to use.

By Rob Wallace and Marcela Putnam

Vice President for Student Affairs Thomas Morales and Associate Dean Paul Bobb are attempting to repossess $21,000 in evening student activity fees from Undergraduate Student Government control. The $21,000 would go on top of $79,000 in activity fees bullied from the student government last year for projects the pair of administrators champion. Just what's going on here?

Our story begins in 1999 when the Evening Student Government (ESG) was merged with the Day Student Government to make a single Undergraduate Student Government (USG). The merger was pursued by both Morales and student government officials, all of whom sought to get their hands on the some $79,000 in evening student activity fees that had accumulated untouched after the ESG went for many years out of operation. Another $21,000 has accumulated to the defunct evening student newspaper, the Nightwatch.

In December 1999, Morales and Bobb signed a letter of understanding about the ESG monies with then-USG President Rafael Dominguez and then-USG Evening Affairs VP Richard Lawrence. The letter stipulates how the $79,000 in accumulated evening student activity fees for the ESG are to be spent over the next three years.

Thirty thousand dollars are to be spent for computers in the USG/Finley Student Center labs (NAC rooms 1/115 and 1/114) and for expanded lab hours for evening students. Twenty five thousand dollars are to be spent on furniture for the USG, the NAC student lounge and the Finley Student Center conference rooms. Finally, $29,000 will be used to repair and reopen the pool in Wingate Hall and for the purchase of fitness equipment. Recreational hours at the Wingate Gym must be expanded to 7:30 am to 8:30 pm.

According to Dominguez, he revised the letter of understanding Morales first presented him for USG signatures. Morales's first draft proposed using $30,000 in evening student activity fees for computers evening students would not be able to access as the computer lab closes at 6 pm. All of the $25,000 for furniture would have gone toward the administration-run-and misnamed-Finley Student Center conference rooms. Lastly, Morales wanted $29,000 in evening student activity fees to refurbish a gym that would have been closed during the evening hours.

VP Thug

Amazingly, Morales's absurd first draft was a step up from his previous attempt to grab the $79,000. In May 1999, at the next Student Service Corporation meeting after students voted down an administration-led referendum to raise the student activity fee by $12, Morales and Bobb pushed a vote through giving the entire ESG reserve to Wingate Gym. Only one student representative was present at that SSC meeting.

(The Student Services Corporation is a non-profit corporation CCNY established to collect and allocate students' activities fees. By setting up the SSC, CCNY can indemnify itself if a vendor hired by one of the campus entities receiving activity fee monies decides to sue for any malfeasance. The SSC board is comprised of administrators-who dominate SSC operations-student government officials, and faculty.)

Morales's piggy SSC maneuver was blocked when a newly elected Dominguez told the Student Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees that students did not have proper voice in deciding what to do with the money. According to CUNY by-laws, the Board of Trustees must approve the reallocation. On the basis of Dominguez's testimony, the committee denied Morales his Wingate money and sent the proposal back to City College.

After the meeting, outside CUNY Central on 80th Street, a clearly pissed Morales motioned Dominguez over and, according to witnesses, told Dominguez, a college junior, "I'm going to get you."

"Where are the Computers?"

Current USG president Jason Compton told the Messenger he thought Dominguez did students a favor by revising the agreement to expand services for evening students. "I think aspects of the agreement were definitely positive," Compton told the Messenger. "Money for computer labs, and extended hours for evening students at the computer lab and the gym. I'm all for it."

Compton, Treasurer in last year's student government, led a faction in the USG that bitterly opposed Dominguez. Compton's slate defeated Dominguez's in last year's student elections.

Despite the administration's phase-out of an official "evening student" designation, evening students still very much exist. A large portion of CCNY's student body arrives on campus for night classes after a day at work. Their needs are largely unmet by a campus that for all intents and purposes closes down after 6 pm. Three years ago the administration regularly locked all bathrooms in the NAC Building in the evening because of a shortage in staff needed to clean them.

The agreement's call for "expanded hours" means not only that the computer lab and the gym have to be open to evening hours, but that the administration needs to have them staffed too. Administrators may be willing to do so for the gym as several of them have been spotted working out there. In 1998, a Graduate Student Council member told the Messenger they saw administrators working out in Wingate. This year, Dean Bobb has commented during meetings with students how wonderful his workouts at Wingate have been.

Still, the hours and the computers for the USG/Finley Center Computer Center are not in place, worrying observers. In one of their last acts as USG president and Evening Affairs VP respectively-indeed only two days before Compton took office-Dominguez and Lawrence signed a SSC disbursement form authorizing the purchase of $15,106 in new computer equipment for the USG/Finley Student Center computer lab. The other two signatories for the ESG reserves, Morales and Bobb, did not sign the copy of the disbursement the Messenger obtained. Nor are the new computers in the lab. One student wondered why administrators were dragging their feet and asked the Messenger, "Where are the new computers?"

Despite Dominguez's changes for the better-evening hours for the Wingate Gym are already instituted-the Messenger was struck by the patchwork nature of some of the agreement's stipulations, a point Dominguez concedes. For example, for the new furniture the agreement states, "The College must provide accessibility to accommodate evening students." That doesn't mean too much as students rarely use the Finley Student conference rooms that the administration often rents, along with the Aronow Theatre, to off-campus organizations. So, in short, evening student funds are being used, albeit indirectly, to help pay off a $100,000 debt Finley Center has accumulated.

The agreement reads as if Dominguez and the USG were making the best of a bad situation. There's something to be said for that, but the Messenger is struck by a most peculiar thought: Why are Dominguez, Compton and the rest of the USG forced to make the best of a bad situation by signing and administrating an agreement not in the full interest of their constituents? Why do VP Morales and Dean Bobb have any say whatsoever in how the $79,000 is spent?

Once the merger between the Day and Evening Student Governments went through, shouldn't the new USG, along with its new VP for Evening Affairs, have full jurisdiction of the ESG fees? Certainly the USG has more claim to those fees than Morales and Bobb. Why do student officials have to rubberstamp expenditures administrators have no business demanding?

Another $21,000

According to Compton, Morales now wants the Nightwatch's $21,000 to be added to the $79,000 agreement. At the first, and only, Student Services Corporation meeting this year, Compton had the Nightwatch proposal tabled for the next SSC meeting.

Compton and current USG VP for Evening Affairs Kilsis St. Hilaire told the Messenger that they would rather have the $21,000 in evening student activity fees be "directed solely for services at night." No disrespect to students who attend most of their classes during the day, but evening students have nothing, nada, zilch. Just about all the services and administrative offices day students take for granted are closed by the evening.

St. Hilaire is in the midst of preparing a survey for students who take classes in the evening hours, to see what they need. Compton told the Messenger that the student government is compiling lists of schedules of various student resources on campus to see if evening students are adequately served.

St. Hilaire and Compton proposed better uses for the $21,000. These include a trained staff member to answer evening student questions and process their bills, registration, etc. Or hours for the campus bus could be expanded. The bus, which transports students to and from the nearby subway stations, currently stops running at 8:10 pm. Evening classes run until after 10 pm. St. Hilaire and Compton have also thought about getting bus service expanded to the South Campus parking lot which can be creepy, particularly at night. According to Compton,

Security's bike patrols, including of the South Campus, end at 8:30 pm.

But whether students-not administrators-can allocate their fees as they see fit remains to be seen.

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