Cash Prizes for What?

When I first heard about the “The SGA Crisis Contest” my gut reaction was: “The contest serves not just as a way to generate ideas but also serves to get students in the cost-savings mindset, which is just as important in getting students to engage in some of the tough decisions being made on campus….” But I increasingly believe that the SGA is not approaching this in the right way. Giving away $200 ($150 first prize, $50 second prize) creates an arbitrarily competitive mindset and does not focus students on the real issues at hand. A mechanism for submitting suggestions for budget saving has been in place since this all kicked off in October. Essentially, this is $200 in advertising for President Liebowitz’s financial challenge webpage and says to students that you should only participate, engage, and discuss campus issues when you might be paid to do so. No one on MiddBlog or The Campus gets paid to write articles on Middlebury. No one on the SGA gets paid to debate honor code revisions. Why should we be paying those who drop an email to the SGA, take the money, and run? The truth is that students will not use this contest to get in a “cost-saving” mindset and engage in a dialogue with the Budget Oversight Committee. We need students to start and stay engaged in the budget process and become part of a larger dialogue on campus.

If you want to really engage in budget suggestions, you have to know what’s on the table, what’s been decided, and how to compare cuts. Simply saying some program should be cut is meaningless unless you frame it in a comparative statement. Something should be cut in favor of something else. Something should be saved at the expense something else.

I have issues with the fact that the contest is named “the crisis” contest but I’ll save that MiddBlog post for another day. I like (yes, really like) how the SGA is getting creative and refocusing on budget issues, but giving away cash prizes is not the right signal to send to students.