Over-Realized Committee to rename Over-Realized Fund
Let’s start with a quick history lesson. Every term you pay the Incidental Fee. This fee goes to pay for all the insane programs, contracts, and other things your student government does. The amount of fee you pay is the amount of money the ASUO spends on its various ideas and projects divided by the number of students expected to attend UO. Since enrollment seems to have a way of increasing fairly regularly, by the time enough I-fee has been collected Spring term to cover all of the budget, there’s some leftover. This is known as the Over-Realized Fund.
It is the responsibility of the Senate to allocate the Over-Realized Fund however they wish. This year, a committee has been formed to recommend different ways to allocate the funds back to the full Senate. This committee was appointed last week, based on a careful selection process consisting of asking for volunteers. The committee’s first meeting is today and one of the pressing items on its agenda is, in the words of Sen. Evan Thomas, “Discuss Over-Realized Project name/slogan.” Thomas elaborates:
“We looking for a slogan or means of advertising this extra student money to the student body without calling it ‘Over-Realized Funds.’ We’re looking for an exciting and intriguing project name, so input about this is fantastic.”
Will someone explain to me why we need to call it something else? Why do we need to advertise this to the student body at large, when the constellation of money pits that we kindly refer to as programs will come up with a myriad of ways to dispense with this cash? I understand the need for public relations in general, but sanitizing everything to sound pretty or hip is particularly annoying, especially when we’re dealing with a group of people (college students) who are supposed to be smarter than the general public? I know I’m probably wrong, but I’d like to hope that the populace could figure it out. Even if they can’t, they probably won’t be able to get whatever silly name the committee comes up with.
I will be unable to attend this stupid meeting, but I would implore someone, anyone to attend and say loudly and proudly, “Why don’t we call it the Over-Realized Fund?” Please, do it for me.
