Endowing financial freedom

Two weeks ago I seem to have caused a “scandal” of sorts. Student council presidents, group leaders, some administrators and many students were hijacked from discussing relevant issues into talking about a fictitious “race war,” as one student put it, started by a “bigot.” Several multicultural groups went so far as to invite the Engineering Student Council and the Columbia College Student Council to moderate an “emergency planning meeting” Wednesday night.

Hold the phone. It is suddenly an “emergency” when an American of Indian descent decides to highlight concrete numbers available to the public? It’s dangerous when someone shows that the average member of a Multicultural Greek group receives 30 times more money than a student in a non-cultural fraternity? Or that nearly half of student life group money disappears into a black hole of “culture” where the vast majority of the student body can never see where the money went? My numbers are finally on my article Web sites if you want to check them out.

Furthermore, I do wish to apologize for my “hookup/spouses” line in my last op-ed. I was going for a laugh to break up the tension in my article, but apparently I was not adept at making a joke. I apologize if my humor, which in retrospect I realize was not humorous, offended anyone.

But the reality is this—I’ve talked with several members of the opposition. Everyone I’ve spoken with has agreed that there are cultural groups that underperform. Club Zamana, Hillel, and Muslim Students Association are not any of those groups. Our opinions only differ because the opposition wants the onus of seeking out cultures to be on the students while I want it to be on the established institutions, the clubs.

Now that I have your attention, I’m not going to talk about race anymore. It is not constructive. I want to propose a solution to the problem we’ve been talking about—club endowments.

In the long run, by using this proposal, clubs can get free rein to do any and all kinds of activities that they want to do without funding limitations.

The idea is simple—large student groups like Columbia University College Democrats, Club Zamana, the Black Students Organization, the Asian American Alliance, the Chinese Students Club, etc. reach out to their alumni to contribute money to establish an endowment. They all keep getting student life money with no penalty until they can operate by themselves using just the payout (3 percent) from their endowment. At that point the governing boards will wean these successful groups off of student life money over the course of 3 years.

If club alumni gave only $2,500 in total per year, by the end of 20 years, virtually any major group would be able to fund itself on the 3 percent interest alone (over $7,000 even accounting for inflation)!

But let’s be realistic. Most of these groups have more than 25 alumni. If any club raised on average $5,000 a year (50 gifts of only $100 from the hundreds of club alumni out there), in 50 years each group will get over $1,000,000—that’s right, a million dollars—to fund their operations. This is the power of compound interest that you’ve learned about for the past 20 years.

Even this number is low. $5,000 in 40 years is equivalent to only $1,500 in present value. And as alumni bases grow, more and more money will be donated. My projections indicate that at the end of 20 years each club will be getting nearly $75,000 per year in interest alone.

Using those funds these groups can truly make a difference on campus and can even co-sponsor other groups.

Of course the results of this project won’t even be seen by the time your younger siblings come to Columbia. But if we set the framework now, we will be able to promote a truly diverse culture on campus.

Yes, we will be inconvenienced for the immediate present. But since we love our clubs, we want them to be better off when we leave than when we joined them. By raising money for the long term we can make sure that our clubs do well in the future.

If multicultural groups really want to make a difference on this campus they should start these endowments.

The problem is that Columbia Administration won’t let us do this. Why not? By increasing the interactions between students and graduates, alumni will actually see the people in whose lives their contributions will be making a difference. Wouldn’t that help giving rates?

Regardless of your position on race on this campus, shouldn’t we all be working to make sure that our groups are on financially better footing in the future? Shouldn’t we all want to give our clubs the foothold to get over a million dollars a year?

E-mail the vice presidents of finance for your student councils and tell them very simply, “We want club endowments.”

You may disagree with me on my politics. You may take issue with what I say in writing. Despite that, I encourage you to join me in achieving financial freedom for our groups. Club endowments are the only sure-fire way of saving Columbia’s student-group community in the long run.

Rajat Roy is a School of Engineering and Applied Science senior majoring in industrial engineering and operations research and minoring in environmental engineering. He is a university senator from SEAS. Cutting the Blue Tape runs alternate Thursdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com