Last month, the majority of Binghamton University graduate students voted to make the Graduate Student Organization (GSO) activity fee voluntary for the next two years, rather than automatically included in our student fees. A biennial vote on this issue is required by the SUNY Board of Trustees, and for the second straight referendum, we have voted overwhelmingly in favor of a voluntary fee. The GSO Chief Elections Officer has explicitly stated that voter turnout was the highest in recent memory, and the official results of the Fee Referendum were that 53 percent voted in favor of voluntary, 27 percent voted in favor of mandatory, and 18 percent abstained. Discounting abstentions and other missing votes, graduate students voted nearly 2 to 1 in favor of voluntary fees.

Unfortunately, the GSO Executive Board, along with nineteen departmental senators, wish to deny the democratic process, and have moved to hold at least one re-vote intended to achieve a “mandatory” majority. In previous years, GSO E-Board members have claimed that activity fee re-votes have been necessary, apparently due to a lack of information about what mandatory and voluntary mean. This year, members of the E-Board spent considerable time and energy providing information on the two options, with some officers openly campaigning in favor of mandatory fees. Equipped with this information, and in far greater numbers, the well-educated and rational graduate students of Binghamton University have chosen voluntary fees. We feel that any re-votes explicitly contradict the wishes of the majority of graduate students, disenfranchise those students who participated in the first election and violate the stated core mission of the GSO “to ensure that graduate student needs are met.”

We will not presume to offer explanations for why GSO E-Board members and other senators are so opposed to the stated interests of the graduate student body. Nor will we speak for the majority of graduate students in other departments who have so strongly chosen voluntary fees. However, after we discussed this issue with our fellow political science graduate students, a common rationale emerged: the GSO activity fee does not currently meet the needs of graduate students. Last year, activity fee funds allocated for departmental use only accounted for 24 percent of collected fees, and GSO projected budgets for the upcoming year will likely reduce this allocation for many departments. Meanwhile, 27 percent of activity fees go to salaries for GSO E-Board members, many of whom belong to a small group of frequently incumbent graduate students. Anger over this expenditure of resources is keenly felt by graduate students in our department, anger which is increased by our knowledge of how disproportionate this allocation is compared with other schools within the SUNY system.

In recent years, GSO officers at Stony Brook University have been paid roughly one third of the salaries of Binghamton E-Board members, despite Stony Brook’s student activity fee bringing in $25,000 more. And despite the University of Buffalo collecting nearly $600,000, or 300 percent, more in activity fees, their recent allocations for officer stipends are only $16,000 greater than ours. The biennial graduate student activity fee vote is intended to serve not just as a referendum on payment structure, but also as a referendum on the behavior and policies of the GSO Executive Board. It is fundamentally unacceptable for the GSO E-Board to force through a policy that is opposed by a significant majority, when it is clear from our department that a major explanation for this disapproval is the disproportionate benefits these individuals reap.

The senators of the political science department, having consulted with our constituents, shall hold firm on our position that this re-vote violates both the core mission of the GSO as well as the principles of democracy and accountability that bind our society together. We encourage the graduate students who read this, regardless of their position on GSO fees, to contact their senators and communicate to them that the graduate students have expressed their views and a re-vote is both unnecessary and inappropriate. Furthermore, if this re-vote goes forward, we urge the large majority of graduate students who supported voluntary fees to continue to express their democratic voices and promote accountability by voting “voluntary” in that election and any other subsequent efforts to disenfranchise them.

Thank you,

Jeremy Berkowitz

GSO Senator, Political Science Department

Shawn Donahue

GSO Senator, Political Science Department