Author: Riley Hooper
On Saturday, April 24, Programming Board (PB) will enlist the talents of hip-hop giant Nas and up-and-coming soul singer Mayer Hawthorne, along with a lineup of local artists and eateries, to throw an end-of-the-year extravaganza. The party is the biggest PB event of the year – and one of the only ones.
Making its debut this year, Springfest is an emblem of the current Programming Board. The event represents this year’s PB managers and staff, the different philosophy they have taken toward programming, and the results of this shift.
Programming almost no events fall semester and not putting on several signature PB events over the course of the year, this year’s PB managers and staff have been scrutinized recently in two letters to the editor printed in The Occidental Weekly.In his March 3 letter, former PB staff member and last year’s PB manager Victor Sowers (senior) wrote that PB has put on “fewer, smaller and less varied events than in the past.”
Soon after, current PB staff member Krystal Zayas-Wright (senior), who has been on PB or PB Tech all four years at Oxy, backed up Sowers’ statements, writing, “I find what has happened with PB this year pathetic, irritating, and disheartening.”While these critiques are the opinions of individual students, PB has an overall mission statement to guide its decisions and ultimately answer to.
The mission of Programming Board, according to the ASOC Web site, “is to organize and sponsor innovative programs that uphold the college’s mission statement and integrate social, cultural, and academic life. To do so, Programming Board will collaborate with student organizations in ways that reflect timeliness, excellence, and professionalism.”
As a student service, PB is funded by ASOC, which allocates its budget from the student body fees paid by each student each academic school year.
This year PB was given $89,500, according to documents from the ASOC finance office. This amount is larger than PB’s budget has been in the past, but only because of the school’s overall student body increase; PB’s budget is still the same proportionately, said ASOC President Andrew DeBlock (senior).
Given that PB is funded by student body fees, students should ideally approve of how their money is spent. However, this year, at least some students don’t.
“I do agree that their [students’] concerns are very valid, especially when students feel that their needs aren’t being met by something that is paid for by their money,” DeBlock said. “Of course it’s a valid concern and needs attention.”
There is a consensus, even amongst PB staff, that this year’s Programming Board could have done better. The question is, how did the organization get here, and what happens next?
An Upward Trajectory
In the fall, PB had little to show for its efforts. Most programming consisted of taking small groups of students off campus to outings like dinner, a movie or to Cirque du Soleil. In the past, PB had rarely done this type of off-campus programming, Sowers said.
The off-campus events PB programmed this fall accommodated anywhere between 15 to 50 students, staff members said. Most often, the first students to e-mail in were the students chosen to go. However, the first seven spots were always reserved for whomever of the seven members of the PB staff were able to go, Zayas-Wright said.
“I think there’s always difficulty with that as far as letting people in,” she said, pointing to the fact that PB staff was always allowed to attend, and that oftentimes their friends came along too-in her case because she pushed them to e-mail in, or called them up when other students canceled.
Aside from the aforementioned events, PB held the BMX bike show in the quad and co-sponsored several events such as dances.In January of this year, the PB staff met on campus for an all day retreat with the Office of Student Life’s (OSL) Assistant Director of Student Organizations and Leadership Development Justin Gerboc.
Gerboc is also the student services supervisor, or advisor to all of the ASOC student services (such as The Occidental Agency, Bengal Bus and the Student Activities Center). At this meeting the staff discussed its plans for the upcoming semester and set its programming calendar for the remainder of the year.
Here, staff members came to a consensus that they would not put on smaller, more private off-campus programming any more, as this was not a responsible use of money, considering how much it cost and how few people were able to go, staff members said.
Therefore staff members decided they wanted to bring programming back to campus and reach out to as many students as possible. As a result they began developing the Bring Back the Quad series and more on-campus events.
While PB Manager Nebeu Shimeles (senior) and Assistant Manager Alex Nourafshan (junior) admitted that programming could have been better than it was in the fall, they feel that PB has made great strides and are happy with the programming they have organized this spring.
A Late Start
Gerboc and the PB managers said that the organization got off to a slow start this year because it was not given its budget from ASOC until more than a month into the school year. The ASOC budget was not passed this year until Oct. 27, 2009, DeBlock said, because former ASOC President Patrick McCredie ’09 did not develop a budget for the ASOC and all of the student services in the spring of 2009.
In doing so, McCredie violated the ASOC Constitution, which mandates that the president meet with the student services in the spring and develop a budget based upon a historical precedent for the following academic year to be voted upon by the new ASOC Senate the next fall.
“I came in assuming it was going to be ready for me . . . and there’s nothing for me so we had to do the entire process from scratch a semester late,” DeBlock said.
While the budget was being worked out, Shimeles and Nourafshan stalled the organization’s hiring and planning processes.”We could barely hire a staff because we didn’t know what our figure was going to be,” Nourafshan said. “. . . So it was really difficult for us to try to plan, kind of, big events.”
Both Zayas-Wright and DeBlock, however, expressed that the managers could have gotten started at least hiring a staff even though their budget wasn’t set.
DeBlock said that other student services began hiring before their budgets were set.”It was a budgetary issue, I do agree, but we did assure them you can be guaranteed at least X amount so they could start hiring,” he said. “PB chose not to, even though they were given assurances from us that they would clearly have enough money to start hiring a staff.”
New Management
It has also been suggested by staff members that PB got off to a rocky start because both of its managers were new to the organization. Although all but one member of the current PB staff had served on staff before, neither Shimeles nor Nourafshan had ever been involved with the organization. In addition, Gerboc was in his first full year on the job, having joined the Oxy staff in April of 2009.
“First semester there were a bunch of things that I wish, you know, we could go back and change-I wish were different,” Shimeles said. “I’ve never done PB in the past, Justin is new, Alex is new, so sure, that semester wasn’t as good as it could have been, and that sucks.”
Zayas-Wright said she would have preferred that the managers had previous experience but explained that it happened this way because none of the returning staff members wanted to take on the manager position.
A New Philosophy
With the new managers came a new philosophy for PB. From the start, Shimeles and Nourafshan expressed that they did not want to put on as many dances as PB was known for in the past.
“Talking to a lot of students I think people are kind of overwhelmed with all the dances – there were, in the past, a ton of danc
es,” Shimeles said. “I think we saw an opportunity to use the money in a more beneficial way. Setting up a dance and hiring the sound and light people is really expensive for an event that isn’t that special.”
When allocating PB’s budget in the fall, President DeBlock and the senate discussed with the PB managers their plans for the year. DeBlock said that Shimeles and Nourafshan expressed their desire to program fewer dances, but they also said that they would maintain some of the traditional events that PB is known for (events such as, but not limited to, Da Getaway, Mafia and Sex on the Beach).
“I had no problem with that personally,” DeBlock said. “I thought that this is a unique take-it’s something different that may be very successful and it may change the tide at Oxy, or it may change how campus events are programmed.”
While senate took the specific types of programming PB proposed into consideration, DeBlock said that it’s not necessarily senate’s job to make funding contingent upon factors like whether or not traditional events will be maintained. He said that the PB manager is hired for a reason, and it is up to that individual to make those kinds of decisions.
DeBlock added that the organization will receive funding “if they have a good rationale and if I think they are putting on events they can demonstrate to me are worthwhile.”
The ASOC president said that while he and the senate were pleased with the PB managers’ initial plans, the organization has not entirely followed through on its word.
A New Tradition
From these new managers and this new philosophy sprung Springfest – a new event that they hope will become a new tradition on campus. The managers have suggested that being new to the organization allowed them to contribute a fresh perspective and open the organization up to new programming ideas.
“To be honest, if anything it would be a good thing because students always complain that there’s too many dances, there’s too much of the same monotonous programming and I think that we’ve brought new things to Programming Board,” Nourafshan said.
Springfest is an event that PB Manager Shimeles spearheaded and played a leading role in organizing, especially in securing the big act, the money for which was supplied by funds from Dean of Students Barbara Avery. Shimeles said that Springfest plays into one of PB’s main goals this year, which was to institutionalize new events.
“I think everyone on campus thinks there are some things Oxy is missing in terms of the college experience, relative to other schools that have spring music festivals and have these big names come and have these events that cater to the community,” Shimeles said. “The whole idea of Springfest is to institutionalize something and, moving forward, you can say PB did this this year and [it will continue] every year.”
Shimeles said Springfest is designed to appeal to a wide variety of students. From the local artist showcase to the mainstage concert, the food trucks to the various performances, there is something for everyone, he said.
Anticipating that some would complain that the main concert is hip-hop, following in the long tradition of hip-hop acts that have come to Oxy over the past four years (Talib Kweli, Lupe Fiasco and People Under the Stairs, to name a few), Shimeles said that the staff made sure that the rest of the acts and performances were varied.
Shimeles hopes that PB will continue to put on Springfest in years to come. Next year’s PB manager Dan Perez (sophomore) said he hopes to put on the event, but is not sure where the funding for a big act will come from; he is currently in the process of meeting with the senate and Dean Avery to find out.
A Loss of Tradition
While Shimeles and Nourafshan’s fresh perspective brought new insight to PB programming, it may have also contributed to a loss of some of PB’s staple events.
“I think the fact that for both of them this is their first year on PB has made it both easier in that they’re not necessarily tied to the old programs, but more difficult in that they don’t know the history of the old programs,” Gerboc said.
In past years there was an expectation that PB managers would put on the same traditional events, such as the Club Oxy dance, Winter Formal, Mafia, Da Getaway and Sex on the Beach, year after year.
“One expectation that was clearly established when I took over manager from Brett [Safford ’08] was that Programming Board has events which are traditional which have been going on for decades, in some cases,” Sowers said. “You have to put them on, it’s just something the student body expects and there’s no other organization to do it. Within that, you still have a lot of money and a lot of time, so you can program other events around those.”
This year, out of the aforementioned events, only Winter Formal and Da Getaway were held. Sowers and Zayas-Wright’s recent letters to the editor expressed frustration over the loss of such traditional programming.
Zayas-Wright was particularly frustrated that Mafia and Sex on the Beach did not happen. Mafia, the week-long role-playing game of murder and deceit, which has been held on campus for the last 40 years and traditionally leads up to Da Getaway, did not happen because of a lack of planning and motivation from PB staff members, Zayas-Wright said.
As she was in charge of planning Da Getaway this year, Zayas-Wright had hoped that another staff member would spearhead Mafia. PB had planned to do the event, but when it came time to organize it, no one stepped up, she said. Three OSL programming assistants even offered to help out, but since PB didn’t provide a staff member to organize the event, it fell through.
The staff decided that, rather than not doing the event well, they’d rather just not do it, Gerboc said.
“We weren’t able to lend as much support [to programming Mafia] as we would have liked to,” Shimeles said. “We wanted to make it happen but because of logistical stuff we just couldn’t.”
Sex on the Beach, an Oxy tradition for over 20 years, is another annual event that was not held this year. The staff had mixed opinions concerning this controversial dance; while a few wanted to put it on, others did not. The administration, as usual, took a stance against its promotion of sex and alcohol and the night’s reputation for heightened sexual assault, staff members said.
While Shimeles said that he didn’t want to associate PB with some of the “shameful shit” that happens at this event, he insisted that the administration’s view toward the event played no role in the staff’s decision to not put it on.
“Even though it is tradition, like we have Sex on the Beach every year, I’m not the biggest proponent of tradition,” Shimeles said. “If it’s not cool, it’s not fun and not the best use of the money then why not start something new?”
While Shimeles said that the staff made a conscious decision at the beginning of the year to spend more time and money on Springfest, he does not think other programming has suffered because of this decision.
Alternately, Zayas-Wright said that PB programming has suffered, but not necessarily because of Springfest. “I think extra money is going to Springfest, but I don’t think that was the main reason why stuff isn’t happening. I think it’s just lack of motivation,” she said.
Zayas-Wright and fellow PB staff member Ben Herrington-Gilmore (sophomore) said that PB had the resources to put on more events, but was unable to due to a lack of time and effort from management and staff. They both cited Mafia as an example of this.
Additionally, they both said that despite the fact that staff members are paid for 10 hours of work per week, every week, effort was still not made.
“No one on staff consistently put in that much time,” Herrington-Gilmore said. “Also, the events that were put on lacked the time needed to bring the event to its highest possible quality, including lack of time put into advertising and promotion
– people didn’t know our events were happening.”
Both Sowers and Zayas-Wright said that they believe PB could and should put on the traditional PB events such as dances in addition to Springfest.
“I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive,” said Sowers of an event like Springfest and PB dances. “I think there is a trade-off but I don’t think the line is drawn as firmly in the sand as they [current PB staff] think it is.”
Zayas-Wright said that while she supports Springfest and is excited about the event, she does not think it should replace traditional PB events.
“This year they’ve lost a lot of those traditional events and I think it’s really hurting the student body,” Sowers said. “I don’t really know why but partly I think it’s because they hired a student manager who didn’t have previous experience on PB. I think continuity is really big in student services and that’s kind of being lost.”
An Ambiguous Role
This loss of traditional, larger events has prompted some to question the role of PB on campus.
Sowers said, in his view the purpose of PB is to program large events. But this year, with PB not putting on signature events and with OSL programming assistants and other organizations holding smaller events, he sees the lines between PB and these organizations blurring.
In addition, DeBlock said that PB’s role in co-sponsoring events this year has led to questions concerning the role of the organization.
As the PB managers made a concerted effort to co-sponsor more events, or give out more funding to clubs and organizations to aid their events, this year, the lines have been further blurred between PB and ASOC Senate.
DeBlock is concerned about co-sponsorship for several reasons. He sees it as undermining the senate’s authority, as clubs can resort to PB if they don’t get funding, or enough funding, from senate. While senate has firmly established guidelines for allocating funds to clubs and organizations, PB does not. “We give out funds based on priorities in senate and we don’t see that in PB,” DeBlock said. “I don’t know what standards they hold among students, it seems very arbitrary.”
DeBlock said that it is not fair that clubs can also essentially “double dip” into both organizations, thus receiving ASOC funding twice.
Lastly, DeBlock said that it is problematic when PB gives funds to other organizations to put on events when PB has a salaried staff and is an organization devoted to programming events.
“When you start having clubs putting on your events through giving funding to them, what’s the point of having a staff?” DeBlock asked.
DeBlock stressed that PB is important because it is run by students and funded by student fees and thus differs from other programming boards on campus which are tied to organizations such as the OSL or the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life.
“I see a freedom there to be disassociated with a campus organization,” DeBlock said. “It provides that extra step of separation where this money is completely at our discretion, so if campus life is being dictated by the campus departments and students don’t like that, there’s the option of Programming Board.”
An Issue of Accountability
As students have begun to speak out, a question arises as to who or what body is able to hold PB accountable for its actions. Given that the organization is allocated the largest budget of the student services and that PB has a mission to uphold, who is making sure that student body fees are being spent responsibly?
According to the ASOC Constitution, as the student services supervisor, Gerboc has the ability to hire and fire student services managers. However, Gerboc said he would not feel comfortable using his power to fire a manager without first consulting the ASOC Senate, since the money for student services is allocated by ASOC.
“I feel like I’m in an odd sort of spot . . . I’m being asked to advise a group over which I don’t hold any really sincere influence . . . because the money and the everything about it is not within my control,” Gerboc said.
However, ASOC President DeBlock said he does not feel he has much control in terms of holding student services accountable either. Because Gerboc is the only person able to fire a student services manager, and because the senate cannot revoke funds once they are allocated, DeBlock expressed that there is not much he can do.
In addition, DeBlock cited that neither the ASOC Constitution nor the Senate By-laws grant the president or the senate oversight of the student services, except when in direct reference to the annual budget.
The only portion of the ASOC Constitution or Senate By-laws that directly refer to student services oversight is the provision which establishes that the student services committee (made up of the heads of the student services and the student service supervisor) will “manage the student services.”
This could be interpreted in any number of ways, but could mean that fellow student service managers hold legitimate sway in reprimanding one another, DeBlock said.
“Essentially, there is a large gap in the constitution when it comes to the student services,” DeBlock said. “They operate in a grey area and I’m not comfortable establishing a precedent or changing the document without student consent.”
DeBlock suggested that if students are concerned about student services operations, they should request a constitutional amendment be enacted that would give ASOC Senate the power to adjudicate on the student services or they should make a student mandate requesting that the ASOC Senate take action.
But as for now, DeBlock said there is no constitutional recourse and he wants to respect the supremacy of the documents.
One way to monitor the student services, however, is through meetings or regular budget check-ups.
Gerboc said that over the summer he and DeBlock discussed the prospect of the senate holding regular meetings with the student services managers to see what they are up to. Gerboc, DeBlock and Shimeles all said that these meetings happened at the beginning of the academic school year, but were eventually discontinued.
DeBlock said that these meetings weren’t very helpful in addressing student concerns because they relied upon statements as opposed to facts.
“I’ve talked to the PB manager and I’ve expressed these [student] concerns to him and he’s assured me that they’re doing all that they can and that they’re meeting their mission but . . . I have to take [his word] at a certain point,” DeBlock said. “I disagree with that in some ways, I honestly do, but to go forward from there is beyond my constitutional role and purview.”
Therefore, DeBlock said that these meetings aren’t the most productive way to go about holding the student services accountable. He said that in years to come, he would like to set up a system that would require the student services to submit their budgets regularly to the senate, which the senators will then discuss at their meetings.
With actual budgets to go off of, the senate would be able to scrutinize spending in light of the organization’s mission and the goals its managers express at the beginning of a given school year.
“If they [the managers] are saying one thing and students are saying another thing it becomes hearsay very quickly, so I’m looking for a more concrete way of a regular submission of the budget so we can look at actual numbers,” DeBlock said.
Both Shimeles and Nourafshan said that while they did not experience a lot of monitoring this year, they are open to the idea of ASOC holding them accountable for their actions as managers of a student service funded by ASOC money.
“It’s not like a heated debate for me, I’d be more than happy to accommodate ASOC since it’s student funding,” Shimeles said.Next year’s PB manager Perez said he is open to being held accountable through submitting budgets and holding meetings with the senate.
“The mission that PB needs to ful
fill is how to get the most students engaged with that budget,” Perez said. “The meetings would help and I do think that ASOC should have an oversight of their money.”
The question as to who has the ability and responsibility to hold PB accountable remains unanswered, as both DeBlock and Gerboc struggle to define their roles in the process.
These issues of accountability will be left up to next year’s staff to grapple with, as a new ASOC president assumes his or her role and Gerboc’s position as advisor to PB will be taken over by OSL’s Assistant Director of Student Activities and Greek Life Devon MacIver.
Regardless, DeBlock stressed the importance of student activism in this situation.
“We’ve never had this before, we’ve never had a student service manager or a student service that’s been this publicly, at least, called out for the way they’ve done their job and they should be held accountable to the campus more than anyone else,” he said.
DeBlock said he appreciates that Sowers and Zayas-Wright wrote letters to the editor because they have put pressure on the situation and made it public. He also stressed that if students are unhappy with the situation, they should apply to be on PB themselves.
Student Apathy or Student Activism?
Student activism has taken a leading role in the discussion surrounding PB. In his letter to the editor, Sowers wrote that PB’s performance this year is an indication of “the decline of student programming and the death of student-run organizations.”
Zayas-Wright wrote that it is representative of student apathy on campus. With the death of the Residence Hall Association, Sowers wrote that more and more power for student programming is going to the hands of professional staff, not students. He worried that, because of PB’s “lackluster performance,” the organization could lose responsibilities or funding in the future.
DeBlock said this would not be the case. He said he does not think it would be fair to punish next year’s PB manager for the performance of this year’s managers.DeBlock noted, in fact, that perhaps PB’s performance this year will positively impact the organization next year.
“I have a lot of faith that because we’ve had one bad year it’s going to maybe give him [Perez] a little bit of insight into the process and how it can go wrong, and also more motivation to do it in a way that students are comfortable with,” DeBlock said.
Perez has already taken a cue from his predecessors and begun the hiring process this spring, even though it is traditionally done in the fall, in order to be prepared for next year, he said.
“What I want is that next year we come into fall semester and it’s just like boom. There’s all this stuff we have planned out – it’s excellent, it’s fun, it’s original,” Perez said.
Perhaps, Gerboc suggested, the criticisms leveled against PB has led to student activism, not apathy.
“It’s funny to think that two students calling out the student body on student apathy is leading to complaining, which is no longer student apathy – and so it’s only going to lead to improvement,” he said.
Gerboc cited the fact that Perez has received about 30 applications for PB staff positions as an indication of this upward trajectory.
Shimeles and Nourafshan both said that, regardless of what catalyzed this surge in interest, be it their programming this year or other factors, they are happy that students are interested in applying for PB.
Although programming had an off-year at Occidental, some good has come from it: a fresh perspective to programming, a new event that could become a tradition at Oxy and heightened interest in PB.
Perhaps PB’s performance this year has prompted students to pay closer attention to how their student fees are spent and to take action when they’re not spent well. Perhaps this year will also help to define who has the capability to hold student services responsible and how the roles of the ASOC president, the senate and the student services committee fit into this.
“I think Programming Board this year is going to get a lot of blame for what may be considered a sub-par year, but I honestly think also it’s sort of a transition year in the philosophy of PB wanting to do better programming, wanting to be sharper, wanting to get to a place of being the premiere programming entity on campus, which is a hard thing to do,” Gerboc said. “It’s hard to change a paradigm without running into some turbulence.”
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