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I would like to comment on Victor Sowers’ letter to the editor a few weeks ago. I thought it was a perfect letter and all complaints regarding Programming Board (PB) completely valid.
As a current staff member of PB, and someone that has been part of PB or PB Tech since my freshmen year either as part of the staff or in a managing position, I find what has happened with PB this year pathetic, irritating, and disheartening. I became a part of PB to put on both traditional and non-traditional campus events for the student population to use. PB is given a large budget (the amount will remain numberless) both for co-sponsorship and for our own events.
Due to the flexibility the job requires PB staff members are paid for 10 hours per week, most of which happens on our own time. But what events has PB produced to show for that?
Not only did we not have the traditional Club Oxy dance in the fall, nor will we have Sex on the Beach this semester, as Victor noted, but Mafia, a forty-year tradition at Oxy will not be happening this year because the staff can’t be bothered with putting on this event, though what people spend their 10 hours of pay doing is beyond me. Mafia is an assassination game played throughout campus for the week leading up to Da Getaway, Oxy’s annual Casino night, which is this Friday March 26th in Booth Courtyard.
However, this year Da Getaway will stand alone. How is it that Oxy pays students to essentially do nothing, maybe two hours a week but not much more than that. If Oxy is going to do that why pretend that PB is putting on events? How about give PB budget to another organization on campus that will actually use the money to program. The failing of PB is another indicator of the increasing lack of enthusiasm and involvement I have seen on the part of Oxy students since coming to Oxy. Two other student run organizations, PB Tech and the Res Hall Association, have died out over the past two years.
What’s next? If students do not continue to participate in such organizations, will Oxy eventually become a school led solely by administrators without student involvement?
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