Hail To The WEEF

Thursday, April 13, 2006

The Posters

Here are the anti-WEEF posters, from latest to earliest. The latest two appeared in Winter 2005; the earlier four in Spring 2004.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Looking Back: Spring 2004

In the 2004 spring term, after offensive, hostile behaviour on the part of WEEF volunteers during the refund process, posters critical of WEEF appeared on campus. Shortly thereafter, WEEF refunds were suspended, in violation of WEEF's obligation to the University.

The contents of the posters and an in-depth explanation of the futility of WEEF can be found in these heated debates on the uwstudent.org message boards:

what was in the posters, and a good, angry debate

more debate

Currently the uwstudent.org website is undergoing maintenance, so comments can not be added to these linked articles at this time.

Hail To The WEEF

Here I plan to lay out the case against WEEF.

The Posters Thank you for the links and pictures. I have spent the last little while reading and I have been thinking alot. For the most part I tend to agree with Pe Curand. I have actually writeen a blog about it myself. It is located on the SIOJ community website which hosts the SIOJ community. The SIOJ community is responsible for www.eng-wiki.org which is attempting to create a be all and end all Waterloo Engineering Information stop. As you can tell, SIOJ is a subdomain of Eng-Wiki (sioj.eng-wiki.org) where the community can have fun, express opinions, and generally do whatever they want. This includes forums our on personal wiki and of course the blogs. I encourage you to check otu what we have been doing on the issue and provide your comments and feedback.

For my recent WEEF blog:

For the Eng-Wiki WEEF article (see contrversy and the talk page):
http://www.eng-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/Waterloo_Engineering_Endowment_Foundation

Again the main pages are:
Eng-Wiki
SIOJ

Thanks,
Chris J Ok sorry about the Triple post. Also the HTML changed from preview to post. So I will link once again:

http://www.eng-wiki.org/sioj/blogs/2006/04/13/weef-fee-issues

http://www.eng-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/Waterloo_Engineering_Endowment_Foundation Just noticed you were already on the wiki. Sorry for the redundancy and I encourage you to join us on SIOJ anytime. As you requested to continue the discussion here, I'll repost my comment, and you can continue. You may have to refer back to the thread at Tron09 (linked above)

"As Ryan G said, we are just used to having these discussions within a forum locked for our class, but we enjoy these, it makes everyone more informed (Ryan J was just curious, not scornful)

Opt-in fees are debated frequently at Feds council. We don't particularly like them, but after hearing both sides of the story, I've been convinced that opt-out is the better way as it has been shown that it results in less administration costs. With this in mind, the University put the policy into play and WEEF and everyone else has to follow. I'm on the Feds Board of Directors now and have been hearing lots of issues with another opt-out program, the Dental Plan. What it came down is the University had 2 choices, opt-in or opt-out, and after a long debate, opt-out was deemed preferential. Yes, I do believe that groups recieve more money from Opt-out, due to it's nature, which is why I support ease of refunds, like the Dental Plans online. Maybe you might be willing to prepare a presentation for the WEEF Board on an alternative refund system? It sounds like you are calling for some sort of WEEF reform, so my suggestion is put your name to your beliefs and propose changes.

From working with Feds, and thus councillors from other faculties, I can note that WEEF is the target of jealousy from other faculties. Arts FINALLY got one just this term in the referendum, but what we have is quite different. They don't have the same types of student teams that need funding for materials. Hence theirs is only $12.50 (if I recall). The reason: they don't have as much as a need...we aren't like the ES endowment fund which spends money on leather couches. We have TANGIBLE results. When Midnight Sun needs a few thousand dollars for misc. parts that they just can't get sponsors to donate in kind, they come to WEEF, because that's what it's for. A slosh fund to fill in the gaps. WEEF wasn't brought in for major infrastructure like the building of a new lab, it was meant to continually fill in the gaps where it was needed.

Above I was trying to explain that if WEEF wasn't there, your money WOULDN'T be in your pocket, it would be added to tuition either way. You wouldn't make that interest, and the transfer wouldn't show as great of an impact as it does through WEEF. The faculty and departments need money for any project, and they get it from us, and the government. They decide either way where they develop, and if they think that spending money on a new Nano-tech building is better than funding a student shop, they'll do it. Regardless if WEEF was here or not. WEEF gives the students, through Class reps, board members, and anyone who wants to submit proposals the ability to take the direction in their own hands. You can't say (as you have been) that if WEEF is here, the university compensates by changing money distribution patterns, and then say hypothetically that if it didn't you'd be able to keep your $75/term and earn interest. The money for projects will come from you either way, it's just a matter of how effective that transfer is, and your control over it, and I'm convinced that WEEF is the best choice for that." This comment has been removed by a blog administrator. Tonight, I'd like to consider further the discussion on interest-earned. The interest-earned argument began with your statement:

Also, we make money from interest! That doesn't happen when the university takes tuition and then just spends it right away.

I pointed out that the benefit of that interest comes at a cost, and I reiterate that. The cost that balances out the gain of interest, in general, is the delay in spending the principal. For now, let's assume that, if WEEF didn't exist, the tuition bill would indeed be $75 higher (multiplied by some speculative factor). The difference is still that WEEF delays spending that money, whereas the Faculty spends it now. The benefit of gaining any assets from this spending accumulates over time, as more and more students come to use them as time goes on, so the earlier the assets are acquired, the greater the benefit measured from any point in time in the future. By delaying the spending, therefore, WEEF actually discounts the effective benefit of the donation.

However, WEEF doesn't just delay the spending -- for the principal, it's delayed indefinitely. WEEF doesn't spend the principal; it only spends a portion of the interest earned. This is often seen as a positive aspect of WEEF (summarized as 'the gift that keeps on giving'). It is certainly positive in the area of risk minimization -- if the economy is terrible in 2008, say, and the refund rate goes to 95% as a result, WEEF doesn't have to change its spending pattern (unless the bad times last). But it has its cost -- efficiency. Because the money is spent later rather than now, the benefits come later, and don't compound until then. Money isn't the only thing that compounds; less tangible things like benefits from investment in equipment and teaching aids, say, also compound - they accumulate more rapidly than linearly. They accumulate at least linearly, for their benefit happens over time. But the investment in making that equipment available also yields experience and achievements that can lead to further progress. What this means is that delaying a purchase comes at a cost, just as delaying a deposit in an investment account comes at a cost.

Further, for a given term's WEEF spending, consider where that interest comes from. It comes from donations made since the beginning of WEEF, as none of the principal was ever spent. How these donations made through time are weighted depends - the earlier donations have earned more interest (and some of that interest isn't spent, so the earlier donations have compounded), but the later donations are larger in total, as the class sizes are larger. But we can collapse the series of donations, in a simplified model, for the purposes of considering the given term's WEEF spending, into one donation at one point in time, donated by one imaginary snapshot of the Engineering student body at that point in time. The donation compounded with time (at a rate that is lower than the investment fund's rate of return, since in reality some of the interest was spent on WEEF funding in intermediate years that we ignore for the purpose of this model), so this year's WEEF spending is a percent of a value that is somewhat higher than the value donated. But the number of Engineering students in the given term are higher than the number in the term of the donation. This is another negative contribution to efficiency -- in effect, all else considered, benefits of the donations of previous terms are spent on later terms when there are more students for whom to pay. If on the other hand students, or the Faculty, spent the money in the same term that the funds were raised (and this is how the Faculty operates), this wouldn't happen. That is very insightful. I agree, there are incured interest due to the compunding of other resources. I find this fact would have held a much greater sway on the inception of WEEF though. WEEF works to a certain degree on the concept of altruism. While the money I give now won't benifit me as much in the present, it will benifit people in the future. Donations of the past are what benifits me now, and I guess I feel sort of obligated to contribute as much support as people in the past have done. This creates a snowbaling effect which will increase benifits to the future (as the original donations keep gaining interest as the new ones are added and their interest is added).

So what it comes down in this case is do you want to see continued improvement which may be delayed a few years (though past contributions allow funds to be paid out in the future) or see immediate spending. Personal preference and recognition of the future are factored in.

I'd like you to speak to a few specifics if you will. First, how do you counter WEEF's contribution to special interests, like student groups? Many groups can't pick up other sponsors if they have not aquired previous sponsors (a Catch 22 corporate policy). WEEF fixes that. Where would these groups get funding without WEEF?

Also can you please speak to the comments I made earlier as to the ability for the Students to control the direction of spending and how that is more benificial to have this control, which would be lost without WEEF?

Would you be more inclined to support WEEF if it had an easier Opt-out program such as online as well as it wasn't JUST interest? Such as Percentage Pricipal+Interest? Do you think that WEEF has grown large enough that it should change it's methods of money distribution to see more immediate results well still allowing growth? Would you support constructive changes, or do you support something else like the elimination of WEEF? Over time, the net effect in any term is similar whether the policy is to spend on the current term or to raise funds for future terms -- some money is taken in and some money is paid out. The benefit of interest, one one hand, is mitigated on the other hand by inflation and by discounting effects like delayed receipt of benefits and student population growth, as described earlier. The 'save for a rainy day' argument makes a case for investing a portion of the funds raised, but for the rest, IMO, outcome is policy-neutral. Because of that, I would gravitate to the simpler solution of spending for the current term, because simpler solutions are often more accountable solutions. But I don't have a strong opinion on this; I was more interested in demonstrating that there was a cost that mitigated the benefit of interest.

In considering special interests like student projects and teams, I recall this comment made by Pe Curand in one of the uwstudent.org threads:

My perspective is that if students are interested in putting teams together, then they should take care of the funding. They can raise funds themselves, or create an umbrella fundraising organization. But this larger fundraising organization should not automatically deduct fees from ordinary students' tuition, even if these fees were strikable. We might as well put UNICEF or World Vision on the fee statements, because by the reasoning of WEEF these would be 'voluntary donations.' Ah, but those Engineering teams are different, because they build the reputation of the school, right? I'm sure some would agree -- people who are involved with those teams, and people who find the reputation of their school so important that they would voluntarily support it. Those people would naturally gravitate to paying. But there are other students who feel that the reputation of the school is due to the talents of the students who are admitted, rather than value-added, and the research that goes on of which they play no part. Further these students feel that this advertised reputation is a scam to net more talented students and a larger share of the tuition pie without needed reforms. These students would want no part in it. It all comes down to a value judgement, just like saving childrens' lives in third world countries.

While special interest donations and the dubious status of WEEF as a 'voluntary' donation seem like separate issues, this comment ties them together -- it explores how donations to student groups and projects are said to benefit the average student, making the case for bundling contributions to these with other contributions in a fund to which everyone donates by default. The common-good argument seems to hinge on the effects of these special projects on reputation, and this comment shows why some (certainly not all) students don't recognize the connection. The precedent exists for teams to filter out student membership by rejecting students who received their WEEF refund (UWAFT team does this), and I fully support this idea in principle. This policy could be extended to other teams, and for student projects it could determine who is reimbursed for project costs.

I find it notable that, when WEEF appeals to students to not get their refunds, it reminds them of how they benefit from WEEF not as often through the special projects/reputation argument, but more frequently through the "it pays for equipment that you use" argument. This confirms, in my view, that the second argument is the strongest case, in WEEF's own perception, for saying that WEEF benefits all students.

Pe Curand makes another comment on special initiatives:

I do not understand why one fund, and/or one associated fee, is responsible for both infrastructure and special interests. Assuming that WEEF actually made sense as a strategy for dealing with funding problems, what do special interests have to do with it? Some people feel intimidated into not getting their WEEF refunds by (illogical) comments like "You use the equipment, so you should have to pay WEEF." Even if this were the case, why should those people also have to pay for special interests? And you can argue that they are entitled to a refund, but again, if we pretend that WEEF fees for infrastructure are legitimate, then why should they be tied to special interests? In order to refund special interests one would have to refund infrastructure fees.

I summarize by saying that I don't have a burning hatred for student initiatives, but I think that it should be recognized that there are those with the view that student initiatives don't benefit them, and that this view is not necessarily anti-social and nihilistic, but for some is based on an outlook that is rational, though based on value judgments that differ from those on which others develop a very different outlook that can also be rational.

I will provide my take on the very interesting issues of student control of spending, and overlap between WEEF spending and Facutly responsibility, in a following comment. I want to address the ideas that WEEF gives students control over spending, and the issue of overlap between WEEF spending and Faculty responsibility.

First: does WEEF give students control over spending? The following seems to go off on a tangent, but leads to my answer to this question:

Because donations are deducted in advance, WEEF feels that it is entitled to the money, and Waterloo Engineering student culture, amplified by WEEF, projects this idea to students overall.

Does anyone really think opposing ideas have a comparable chance of being heard, even assuming the most motivated anti-WEEF activist? Posters were torn down before because they weren't stamped by EngSoc, but other posters meet that criteria and stay up -- this is not an argument against tearing down the posters; this is an observation of how WEEF, EngSoc, and Co. respond to criticism. Is EngSoc likely to stamp anti-WEEF posters? If the posters that had been torn down were submitted to EngSoc, and rejected on the basis of being 'wildly speculative' or even 'false' (the SHEEP poster makes no claims, it simply asks questions in a suggestive tone), would EngSoc be likely to apply similar standards of truth-content to pro-WEEF and anti-WEEF posters? If the Iron Warrior gave token coverage of the criticism of WEEF, would the criticism come across as anything other than a novelty item when the Iron Warrior has a regular WEEF column in which the goodness of WEEF is emphasized?

The anti-WEEF position is one that naturally gravitates to lack of action, not action. The anti-WEEF position is that WEEF is not worthwhile (at least in its present form); the natural response is not to support it if asked, but since the money is deducted in advance, the refund-seeker must take an explicit action to get his money back. I imagine that more person-hours in total are associated directly with WEEF by students getting refunds than in students participating in meetings and making decisions. Further action, like questioning WEEF or suggesting reforms, is unlikely given this situation.

As a result of all of this, how accountable is WEEF for the money it spends? The established attitude of WEEF being entitled to its donations, and the atmosphere that makes criticism and/or reform unlikely, results in a refund rate that is not responsive to what WEEF chooses to spend on. WEEF spends an amount every term that is independent of the relative merit of funding requests across terms. The impact on Engineering students at large of many WEEF sponsored projects is questionable. The extent to which funding applicants know WEEF Funding Council representatives has been perceived to influence funding decisions.

So how much more control should a student feel he has on the spending of WEEF, compared to the spending of the Faculty? Not much, IMO.

This leads into the issue of overlap between WEEF spending and Faculty responsibility. I quote a comment I made previously on the tron09.com message board thread:

But since WEEF itself chooses to allocate much of its spending on things that overlap with Faculty responsibility (such as lab equipment and workstations/computers), the result, according to simple economics, is that the Faculty over time will anticipate WEEF's spending and change its own allocation of spending accordingly.

It's a bit like going to the grocerty store with a list of things to buy, and finding that a generous community endowment fund is giving away free eggs. Perhaps the first time you've already bought your eggs, so you take the free carton as well and your household consumes more eggs. But as time goes on, you learn to anticipate the giving away of eggs, and cease to buy as many yourself.

I find this to be a rational and powerfully persuasive argument against donating to WEEF so WEEF can pay for equipment. I feel that WEEF pays for equipment, despite the inherent futility of it described above, both because those involved with WEEF don't recognize the counter-effect, and because WEEF scores propaganda points by paying for 'equipment that everybody uses', props up its relevance to the average student, and cements the general perception that WEEF is entitled to its donations.

One counter argument that was made to the WEEF/Faculty overlap line of thought -- that when WEEF pays for equipment, it frees up money from University income for everything but equipment -- is summarized as follows:

'Without WEEF, your tuition bill would just be $75 higher.'

This idea does not ring true to me.

- University is not an efficient market. The public Universities, Waterloo included, are propped up by the province; costs are paid for through taxes as well as through tuition.

- Raising tuition makes other Universities appear as better values, and though this hasn't stopped the University from raising tuition before, to the extent to which it is comfortable, it seems to me, and I feel to a significant number of students as well, that this comfort level of the Faculty and University is determined more by outside, often initially uninformed, perception of value rather than the costs of maintaining a certain quality level of equipment.

- The initial perception of tuition cost for many aspiring students does not include voluntary fees, so the Faculty may well ignore the WEEF fee when setting tuition. Once students are locked in, their greater awareness of cost comes with a drastically reduced set of alternatives.

- The particular level of quality that the Faculty feels it needs to maintain can also vary depending on cost pressures. Does WEEF lessen the cost pressures? No, because WEEF pays the same amount regardless of other trends, so the University anticipates its spending and it is not an influencing variable. It would be of influence if the Faculty were interested in striving for more than minimal spending on equipment, rather than its apparent focus on marketing gimmicks and brand projection.

I also note that the reduction in Faculty equipment spending caused by WEEF's equipment spending also reduces the extent that WEEF (nevermind the average student) controls spending - a dollar that WEEF spends on equipment is a dollar that indirectly, ultimately goes into the Faculty's pocket, to be spent the way the Faculty sees fit. Looking Back: Spring 2004 Hail To The WEEF