The Advocate

Whither Health Services?
Administration reconsiders health services funding “in face of dwindling resources.”

James Hoff

With CUNY budgets still uncertain and state revenue shortfalls projected between six and eight billion dollars for the next fiscal year, the Graduate Center administration is looking at ways to reduce its current expenses. One of the items on its list of considerations is its annual contribution to the Health Services Center.

The Health Services Center, which offers free and low-cost health care at the GC and is widely used by many students on campus, has traditionally been funded by a combination of revenue from various sources, including student activity fees and annual contributions directly from the Graduate Center administration.

The Doctoral Students Council (DSC), funded entirely by student activity fees, normally contributes on average approximately 50% of the total Health Services budget or about $62,500 annually. Due to a significant and unexplained bookkeeping error this year, the DSC was able to pay only $37,000, or a little less than 30%. The administration, which usually contributes the other half of the Health Services budget, agreed to cover the remaining amount, paying a total of $88,000 instead of the usual $62,500.

Faced with these increasing costs and uncertain budgets for the next fiscal year, the administration is now looking for ways to reduce or perhaps eliminate its annual contribution.

Matthew Schoengood, Vice President of Student Affairs, is adamant that “there have not been any decisions made yet” about the Health Services Center, but added that “We are examining our options in the face of dwindling resources, and looking at how other CUNY colleges address this issue.”

According to Schoengood, the Graduate Center’s Health Services Center is unique among CUNY campuses. Our administration currently contributes one of the highest percentages of funding to its Health Services Center of any of the other campuses in the university. Baruch, for instance, funds its health center almost entirely with student activity fees, while the administration at campuses like Lehman and Brooklyn pay only a small portion of the total health services budget. Many other campuses contribute less than 10 or 20% of the total health services budgets, while the remaining amount is covered by student activity fees, some of which are often earmarked specifically for health services, meaning they cannot be spent elsewhere.

Schoengood also added that student activity fees at the Graduate Center are the lowest of any of the CUNY campuses, pointing out that the last increase in student fees actually initiated by the Graduate Center was in 1998, more than six years ago. According to Schoengood’s office, this last fee increase, which was raised $10 from $19.60 to $29.60, was in part proposed specifically to increase the health services budget.

The problem with this comparison, admits Schoengood, is that other campuses like Baruch College have much larger student bodies. The GC, with the smallest student body in the CUNY system, would therefore have to increase its student fees significantly more in comparison to other CUNY campuses in order to cover a comparable amount of the health Services budget. While a $10 increase in student activity fees at Baruch College, for instance, would yield approximately $200,000 annually, it would require a whopping $50 increase in the Graduate Center student fees to acquire the same amount of annual revenue.

Regarding the potential threat to the health services budget, Celia Braxton, chair of the DSC’s Standing Committee for Health Issues, said “there is no promise that the 50% will be kicked in for next year and we could be looking right now at the last year of the Wellness Center.” But others in the DSC are more optimistic. They remain hopeful that they will be able to reach an acceptable agreement with the administration. “This is a crisis,” said David Hamilton Golland, USS representative and chair of the Wellness Center Issues Subcommittee, “but it is not something that we can’t all resolve if we work together.”

DSC members insist that they are taking steps to assure continued funding from the administration. Nonetheless, in anticipation of potential cuts in administrative contributions, they have already begun to think of ways to cover the difference.
With recent tuition hikes and the controversy over the technology fee, increasing student activity fees may not be the most popular proposition, but for Golland, it is one of the most obvious and immediate solutions to the problem. According to him, one solution would be an increase of $12 per semester to the student activity fee. This increase would equal approximately $48,000 per semester, or $96,000 annually in increased revenues for the Doctoral Students Council. This would be enough to cover more than all of the administration’s regular contribution to the Wellness Center, without any major cuts to the current DSC budget.

Golland and Braxton said they were still considering whether or not any proposals for increasing the student activity fee would include language that would earmark the money specifically for health services, as some other CUNY campuses do.
In addition to seeking to insure the future of the Wellness Center here at the Graduate Center, Golland said he was concerned about the Graduate Center students whose teaching and research are primarily on other campuses, saying that he was “working to improve the situation of GC students in regards to their access to the wellness centers of other campuses.”

James Hoff is a PhD student in the English Department