Drexel’s Office of Campus Activities announced March 31 that the Good Idea Fund, a sponsor of on-campus events and programming proposed by individual members of the Drexel community since 2010, will be renamed the Bad Idea Fund and repurposed to waste unused funds awarded to student organizations by the Student Activity Fee Allocation Committee.
“The Bad Idea Fund is meant to encourage student organizations to use all the funding they’re awarded each year by spending what they don’t use on the most unpopular expenditures possible,” Rusty Cox, OCA director, said.
Unused SAFAC funding has been reallocated to the Good Idea Fund since its creation, and the amount of unused funding each year has steadily increased since then.
Photo Credit: Peter Parker
“The amount of unused SAFAC funding the past few years is outrageously insulting to student organizations that received insufficient or no funding for what they wanted to do in those years,” Cox said. “We finally realized that the Good Idea Fund was to blame. To put an end to this, we’re sending a clear message to student orgs that get funding: If you insult your fellow students by not spending money that could have been used, we’re going to insult you by using that money for the very last thing you’d ever want it to be used for.”
Faculty and staff throughout the University have already submitted dozens of bad ideas to be considered for funding. Among frontrunners expected to receive funding for the 2014-15 academic year include a plan to erect a new Drexel Shaft monument and to produce pornographic videos starring Drexel administrators that students would be forced to watch every time they log into DrexelOne or Blackboard Learn. President Curly Fries expressed great enthusiasm for the idea of mandatory adult entertainment.
“Everyone knows Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it, no exceptions. As a public figure, I’d be violating Rule 34 if I didn’t get in on the action. Students may find it shocking at first, but at least they’ll be able to take pride in their president’s size,” Fries said with a wink.
In addition to these general-purpose bad ideas, OCA is also considering a proposal to donate a portion of unused funds to those that are diametrically opposed to the missions of the student orgs that don’t spend them. For example, unused funds from Hillel might be donated to the National Socialist Movement, and funding that the Foundation of Undergraduates for Sexual Equality doesn’t spend might be donated to the Family Research Council. Student reaction to the news has been mixed.
“As terrible as it would be to have my student activity fee money spent like that, I must admit it’s only fair,” Mike Litoris, a junior electrical engineering major, said. “If you tell SAFAC this is how you’re going to spend the money you’re requesting from them and then you don’t spend it, you deserve to have it taken from you and spent on something you hate. We can’t expect to see a decrease in unused funds unless there are serious consequences like this. The threat of being forced to watch Rule 34 of Drexel administrators should generate more than enough peer pressure to ensure that every penny of SAFAC funding is spent every year from now on.”
“Haven’t they ever heard the expression ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right’?” Dixie Normous, a sophomore fashion design major, said. “They could give that unused money to the student orgs that spend their own funds most responsibly. It’s called positive reinforcement, and it’s been proven effective! They wouldn’t even have to abandon the erotic theme with positive reinforcement; they could do something like give a year’s supply of condoms to student orgs that spend all their funding.”
OCA will accept bad idea proposals for the 2014-15 year until April 30. Faculty and staff can access the proposal form on CollegiateLink.