A proposal to discourage the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC) from financing academic or language instruction for student clubs sparked fiery debate among student government representatives Wednesday.
Many time extensions and gavel strokes later, the body passed the new rule by a 14-10 vote.
Tempers flared both during and after the meeting, drawing the attention of several passers-by in Smith Union, where it was held. Some representatives who opposed the bill were visibly frustrated as they left.
Vice President for Student Organizations William Donahoe '08 introduced the bill.
"When I charter a club, I have to consider whether the SAFC will be able to sustain the club long-term," he said, "and language-based clubs will get expensive very quickly."
Some students felt that the proposal should be tabled and given further consideration due to its potentially broad impact.
During the meeting, At-Large Representative Ben Freedman '09 said voting that night would be "the most irresponsible thing we could be doing."
Under the new rule, "the SAFC would be saying which clubs are acceptable or not," he said.
"We can't comfortably table it," Donahoe countered. "This policy is supposed to be put in place not necessarily to prevent students from getting the money they need, but to push academic things towards the academic realm...and towards the administration."
SAFC Chair and BSG Treasurer Nicole Willey '08 agreed.
"Our goal is not to screw over students," she said. "The purpose of this is to get money out to students."
"People need to start stepping up and asking for money from the College if they want it" rather than from the SAFC, said Class of 2010 Representative Rutledge Long. Several other students noted that the College has far greater resources than the SAFC, whose annual budget stands at around $640,000.
In a follow-up interview, Donahoe said that if students are displeased with the academic programming the College provides, they should bring their complaints to Vice President for Academic Affairs Sam Dinning '09, who would then bring up the issue with the Office of the Dean for Academic Affairs.
"If enough students want it," he said, "then theoretically the administration should provide it."
But Dinning was not confident in the College's willingness to respond quickly to such requests.
"From constant communication with academic affairs, they're not going to act on this quickly," he said. "We're the group that can act quickly."
Donahoe said that while the SAFC does not currently fund any academic or language instruction clubs, he has fielded requests from students looking to form such groups.
Numerous proposals to tweak the rule's language or table it for further discussion failed. The bill finally passed half an hour after the body had planned to adjourn, with no members abstaining.
But long after the meeting, representatives on both sides of the issue continued to comment on it.
"[The bill] should have received significantly more attention and lacked the sort of nuance that a bill of such magnitude deserves," Freedman told the Orient Thursday. "While I agree that SAFC should not necessarily be the primary source of funding for organizations of academic or linguistic nature, the bill pushed these clubs out the door."
"This blanket statement prohibiting the funding of 'academic instruction' could be interpreted to prohibit all sorts of group activities," Dinning said.
In a joint e-mail Thursday, Donahoe and Willey emphasized the positive aspects of the stand-off.
"It's always difficult to have your work critiqued, but we were glad that it encouraged such an involved discussion," they wrote in their e-mail. "It's very hard to relay to the entire BSG weeks of planning and discussion concerning these issues."
"The bill passed last night is the right solution for now and the concerns raised will be part of a larger discussion in the future," they continued. "The major problem with last night's discussion was the tone that was reached and not the debate itself."
Donahoe later said the student government could rescind the rule relatively easily if favor shifted against it.
Prior to the lengthy debate, the student representatives welcomed Director of Off-Campus Study Stephen Hall, who led a discussion on Bowdoin's off-campus study program. Hall shared data on Bowdoin's program and compared it to those of peer institutions. He also addressed student concerns, particularly regarding a possible future language requirement.
Class of 2008 Representative Ben LeHay called it "embarrassing" that Bowdoin sends students abroad without thorough knowledge of a language.
"[Requiring study] is a better way to get students to break into culture," LeHay said.