Senate President Joseph Ferraro

In my three and a half years at this institution, I have had the pleasure of sitting on the Student Senate for three years as a Senator and serving as President of the Student Senate for one. During my time in these positions and in various clubs, one fact has become glaringly obvious to me: Student Activities is dying.

This year Student Senate has approved six club constitutions, creating the new and reactivating the old. Club executive boards have taken their meager budgets and stretched them farther than seemed possible.  They have held fundraisers, community service activities and some excellent events. We have some of the best students this campus has ever seen, smart, resourceful, determined, and capable.
If the clubs’ leadership is not responsible for the decline of Student Activities, could it be the student body as a whole? Not quite.  Apathy has risen to new levels, but those students who are active work twice as hard to keep their clubs afloat.

So why are our clubs and activities in decline while those at Fordham flourish? Both schools are in close proximity, have almost identical student bodies and are run by the Jesuits.
The difference is that Fordham, like the majority of major colleges and universities, has a Student Activities fee. This fee is added each student’s semester tuition. It gives student organizations autonomous budgets, allowing them to do some amazing things.

With the money generated from this fee, we could expand the Student Activities’ budget, giving a boost to student run clubs like SEB, the Pauw Wow, and the Gannon Debate Society. Students could attend national conferences with their club members and hold concerts with big name artists or lectures by high profile speakers.  For as little as thirty cents a day from each day-time student, the college’s activities can be completely revitalized, bringing us up to par with our peers.

Along with this comes more attractive campus life, a valuable asset for recruiting and retaining students. The money that was previously allotted from the school to student organizations could be put to other uses like hiring a night nurse for intramural sports and resident students on campus. It would not just give us new and bigger budgets, but pump more money into student activities as a whole. Our office of Student Activities does a lot with a little. Imagine what they could do if properly funded.
Over the past few months the Student Senate has done extensive research, compiled finance and admissions statistics from several schools, spoken to other executive boards at various colleges, and created a proposal for our own Student Activities Fee. We have done our best to create a fair and balanced structure for distributing the funds. Everything is in place but the most important part: your support.

Every club’s executive board, the members of the Student Senate, and the Student Activities office have petitions.  Signing this petition will mean a $75-$100 increase in tuition that will have an enormous effect on college life. The revenue generated from this fee gives us, the students, power to shape our own quality of life at Saint Peter’s. It will buy us better programs and give our clubs the boost needed to accomplish their goals.

Sign the petition to send academic honor societies to national conferences to present their research, to bring big label musical artists to campus for concerts and to see famous authors come to the college and discuss their views on the creative process. Sign it to change life at Saint Peter’s for the better.