To the Editors:

The Student Finance Committee is an integral part of student life. SFC works with all student organizations allocating budgets, voting on appeals, and managing activity fee revenue.

Service on SFC requires a significant time commitment. Until now, voting members of the SFC have not been compensated for the hours of work they put in each week. Realizing that this was an imbalance, members of SFC and Senate made an interim solution to keep members in place until a referendum could be put together.

The 2007 Referendum includes a question requesting payment for the voting members of the SFC. We urge you to vote affirmatively on question #2 in order to help the Student Finance Committee improve and meet the high demands of the student body.

This change would mean SFC could attract more skilled and committed members and provide incentive to dedicate the time necessary to get things done. This would also reduce the high turnover which has hampered SFC as an institution.

Just in the past few months, SFC has been filled for the first time in years. We have addressed the concerns of club sports by moving resources and moving to reverse caps and scaling that unduly burdened the teams. Off-campus policy that crippled groups like the outing club has been reversed. All of this has been facilitated by the introduction of compensation. We ask for your help to make this continue.

We all want the SFC to be stronger so it can respond to the many demands placed upon us. It is often hard to make the decisions that we do, but it is something that must be done. If this fails, the continued improvement of SFC will be severely threatened. What is healthy for SFC is to the benefit of the student body. Therefore we implore you to vote ‘yes’ on question #2 of the student referendum.