On Oct. 30, three Whitman students will be among the tens of thousands predicted to flood the National Mall for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s joint “Rally to Restore Sanity/March to Keep Fear Alive” event.

What is startling is that our Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) dollars will be paying for their three round trip plane tickets to Washington, D.C.  Last Sunday, Oct. 17, in an almost unanimous vote (22-2), the ASWC Senate approved a 1,200 dollar budget request proposed by the three first-year students.

As representatives of the student body, ASWC officials are faced with the challenge of balancing the interests of individual students and the larger interests of the student body. In light of this and other similar budget requests, this is a responsibility that has not always been met.

While we acknowledge that students should have access to student dollars for purposes that they choose, and that students should never be deterred from seeking such money, this in no way absolves ASWC of critically questioning and judging if student requests have the clear possibility of benefiting more than just the students who request the funding.

The students made their request through ASWC’s Travel and Student Development Fund. This fund currently sits at approximately 22,000 dollars, money that ASWC encourages students to spend in some shape or form over the course of the 2010-2011 academic year.

According to ASWC’s bylaws, the Travel and Student Development Fund is used for the broad purpose of “funding travel and development opportunities for students, student organizations, and elected and salaried employees of ASWC.” Requests exceeding 1,000 dollars require a majority vote by the Finance Committee as well as a two-thirds majority vote of the Senate for approval.

ASWC is authorized to require recipients of student dollars to fulfill certain conditions before reimbursing their travel or development costs. Such conditions include writing a report to ASWC about their experience and/or holding an on-campus event after they have returned from their student-funded trip. Other requirements can be added to any request by the Senate or the Chair of the Finance Committee.

It remains to be seen, however, how successful ASWC is in enforcing these conditions and what effect they have in bringing valuable information back to the broader Whitman community. Thus, ASWC must verify that these conditions are always met before dispensing ASWC dollars.

The students in question proposed sharing their experience through Facebook photos and by live-Tweeting during the event. They are also required by the Senate to give a presentation to the Whitman and Walla Walla communities, apply to start a club and apply to present at the 2011 Whitman Undergraduate Conference.

We doubt that the conditions that ASWC imposed when approving the request will benefit the student body much less the greater Walla Walla community in any tangible way. Viewing Facebook photos is no different than viewing Comedy Central’s live coverage of the rally.

Furthermore, we question the actual value of the rally itself. With less than two weeks until the rally, New York Times reporter Bill Carter aptly captured the uncertainties surrounding the event when he noted, “no one is quite sure what it is going to be yet,” a statement made as recently as Oct. 14.

No one at the Senate meeting could explain what exactly was going to happen at this rally, who the speakers would all be and if this rally is actually a serious attempt to revitalize American politics or mere satire.

Seeing that the Travel and Student Development Fund is comprised of all 1,537 Whitman students’ annual Student Activity Fee: currently set at 320 dollars: shouldn’t such budget requests strive to benefit the larger Whitman community?

In a similar case two years ago, two students were given money to travel to Japan to experience Japanese culture and food under the pretense that they could somehow bring that back to benefit the Whitman community. To the best of our knowledge, they never did. Last spring, a student was granted funds to make a film over the summer with non-Whitman friends. The film has yet to be screened on campus.

While we recognize that it is impossible for any individual funding request to benefit every student on campus, ASWC needs to evaluate whether or not the recipients of student dollars could, in principle, bring back to campus in a concrete fashion the experiences they seek.

ASWC has rightfully funded in the last two years trips by KWCW managers to a conference in New York tailored to promoting college radio stations, a trip by the Whitman Christian Fellowship to attend a conference in Portland, Ore. and a trip by Club Latino members to go to the Uruguay Leadership Conference, among others. These are all requests that have a clear benefit to more students at Whitman through established campus organizations; there was an obvious benefit that could not have been gained at Whitman. We support these funding decisions by ASWC.

This responsibility to make sure our student dollars are spent appropriately also lies with us, the students who vote ASWC officials into office. Non-ASWC-affiliated students rarely attend ASWC meetings, which are open to public participation.

We challenge students to educate themselves on the Travel and Student Development Fund and how ASWC conducts its business. The ASWC Finance Committee, for instance, meets every Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. in Reid 110. The Student Affairs Committee meets every Wednesday at 10:00 p.m. in the ASWC office in Reid 210.

If you are also disheartened by how ASWC officials have appropriated student dollars in ways that only benefit a select group of students, take a stand and sit in on an ASWC Senate meeting, held one Sunday each month in Reid G02. Student budget requests over 1,000 dollars are discussed and ultimately voted on at these meetings.

ASWC officials have a responsibility to represent the students who do ask for ASWC dollars but also have an equal responsibility to represent those students who do not ask but are ultimately funding these requests.

The students who will be attending Jon Stewart’s rally argued that it was in their civic interest to attend the event. Although Jon Stewart may have a role to play in American politics, we’d like to view civic responsibility in a more substantial way. Rather than supporting a comedian, we would like to think that civic responsibility begins right here in ASWC.