By Trevor Drake

Asking the presidents and treasurers of every club on campus to gather in one spot is an impressive undertaking. Forcing them to do so for hours is foolish.

On Sunday, the Co-Funding Board and Student Activities required (using funding as leverage) all club presidents and treasurers to meet for four hours. No doubt the goals of the meeting — to inform clubs on how to manage their budgets — were genuine. But as time dragged on, those goals became lost.

We ate brunch. Stephanie Wolfe spoke on being a stand rather than taking one. We walked from the Gorecki Center to Murray Hall. Senate members spoke to us for 15 minutes about writing purchase orders. We went to Alumnae Hall. More Senate members talked for 30 minutes about the Co-Funding Board Web site. We used hundreds of helium balloons, numerous plastic bags, yards of string, and rolls of tape to make a huge mass of un-recyclable things that circled the entirety of the room. We concluded by watching an animated otter ensure us we can make a change in the world. The giant mass of waste was created to show us what we can achieve by putting our ideas together.

Four hours is a large time commitment for any student, and the critical information on budgets only takes 45 minutes to present. There is a better way to display cooperative leadership than by amassing junk.

I want to be clear that the intentions, long-term planning and hard work behind the meeting did not go unnoticed. In the future, the Co-Funding Board and Student Activities should focus on administering our money, not our time.

Filed under: Opinion by Justin Roth