What DSG should do

Now that Duke Student Government has a new executive board, The Chronicle has a couple of suggestions for issues DSG should focus on next year.

It is important that DSG not set an agenda that is too broad, because then it risks getting nothing tangible accomplished. Instead, DSG should select one or two major concerns and devote the necessary time, energy and resources toward addressing those concerns.

First, we would like to see DSG fix funding problems and the Student Organization Financial Committee. Currently, funding requests exceed DSG’s budget, and thus DSG does not have the ability to fulfill most requests. As standard policy, SOFC does not fully fund any group’s requests. Administrators even advise organizations to inflate their budgets so that they receive the money they actually need. As a result, many deserving groups are left without appropriate funds.

In order to receive funds, a group must be DSG-chartered, but not all DSG-chartered organizations are equally deserving of funding, and DSG executives should realize this. There seem to be few current avenues for SOFC to differentiate among groups’ contributions to the community.

If anything can be learned from last year’s DukeTravels scandal, in which a DSG-chartered group defrauded students, it is that DSG needs to be more cautious and thoughtful when approving groups and allocating funds.

In order to fix the funding problems DSG should do two things. First, every organization must be rechartered and groups that are no longer viable should be eliminated. At the current time, there is no official process for groups to dissolve themselves. Hence, they remain on the books even after they have become defunct. Second, DSG should increase its programming funds, allowing it to give money for one-time events without requiring the group to have a DSG charter. Not only would this promote social life on campus by allowing more people to get DSG funding for programming, it would reduce the number of chartered organizations requesting on-going funding. It would also allow students to hold events without having to create a perpetually enduring organization.

The second thing DSG should focus on next year is course evaluations. Currently course evaluations are part of an opt-in system, where professors must agree to have their evaluation scores posted on ACES. For years now DSG has been trying to get this changed to an opt-out system, and for years now DSG has been failing. It is time for DSG to rethink the places where it has continually failed to produce results. If professors are not willing to change to an opt-in system, then DSG needs to bypass the professors and create an independent course evaluations website. Not only would this give students access to course evaluations for all classes and professors, it would also allow DSG to create a more subjective course evaluations form that is more useful than the current numerical one.

If DSG only does two things next year, we would like to see these two things get done. They would be of great benefit to the student body and would enhance both social life and the academic experience.