A Brief History of the Student Opportunity Subsidy Program
During the spring semester of 2014, Senate changed a bylaw to establish a new way for Senate to fund student projects and experiences. Paul Messick (former Student Body Vice-President and current student member of SOS Committee) proposed that there ought to be a mechanism through which Senate is able to use some of its money to support students in ways that they are not already supported by other on-campus funding pools. Discussions to start this program started in November of 2013. After sharing this idea with the student body and hearing many reports of sustained student dissatisfaction with the nature and limitations of grant opportunities and other funding from the administration, Senate decided to use a percentage of the interest from the Endowment for Student Autonomy (“Five percent of the averaged amount of the Endowment over the last three years “) each year to establish the Student Opportunity Subsidy (SOS) program.
Senate determined in September of 2014 that this year’s SOS project would be to fund a series of grants intended to financially assist students who are pursuing unpaid or low-paid academic, educational, creative, or career-oriented summer opportunities. By establishing this fund, the Senate hoped to enable students to pursue opportunities that otherwise lack a channel of financial support through the college.
The First Steps
Once the Senate chose summer grants for this year, a committee was formed to carry out the project with SOS funds. Appointments committee solicited applications for, and appointed, two students to sit on the SOS committee. The appointed students, Dylan Vaughn and Paul Messick, were joined by the student body president Danielle Juncal, senators Ashlin Hatch and Galen Harrison, and treasurer Barsha Emdad. While Senate had prospectively discussed potential goals for the summer grant program in deciding on which type of program to commit to, it was up to the committee to determine what sort of role the SOS summer grant program would serve.
From the outset, it was clear to the committee that the program should try to enable opportunities which would be difficult to fulfill in any other manner. Ultimately, the committee developed four guiding principles for the process, our “Hopes and Dreams.” First, they prioritized applicants whose projects demonstrated a clear sense of direction. Second, they prioritized applicants whose projects would supplement their development and expand their horizons both at Reed and beyond. Third, they prioritized applicants with high financial need, and who had been unable to find funding for their project elsewhere. Lastly, they prioritized applicants who presented budgets that were reasonable for the project being proposed.
Once these criteria had been decided upon, it was necessary to begin planning. As the committee was primarily intended as a gap-filling measure, the decision was made to split the awards process into two phases: Big money and Last-Minute-Money. The rationale for this split was that Big Money would support people who had large summer-long projects planned, but who were unable to secure institutional funding (e.g. creative projects, as one example). Last-Minute-Money, then, would cover instances where a relatively small amount of money would be the difference between an applicant being able to take an opportunity or not.
After establishing the two-phases system, the committee set to work on the logistics. It was decided that the deadline would be set late, so as to maximize the probability that the committee would capture applicants who had exhausted all other sources of funding. With the infrastructure set, the only thing remaining for the committee was to get the word out. Initially, the committee had been concerned that there might not be enough applicants, and began making contingency plans for that eventuality. That concern turned out to be unfounded in a big way.
Big Money
The Big Money portion of the process began in March, when the applications were due. After the due date the committee made an initial series of cuts, which reduced the pool by about one third. From the first round of cuts the committee was very impressed with the high quality of the applications. After the first cut, the committee asked the remaining applicants to interview. Each interview lasted approximately ten minutes. A few general questions were asked of every applicant. These focused on elucidating what the effect of a grant would be for the applicant and what the lowest possible grant could be while remaining useful. The following day, as the committee deliberated, it became increasingly obvious that the amount requested dwarfed available funds. This was still the case after the committee considered applicants’ minimum requested amounts.
The goals set out by the committee were used as guidelines for decisions. The main considerations were financial need, whether other grants or funds were available (and if the applicant had sought them out), and whether the application offered a well laid out direction for the summer. As the committee narrowed down the pool it became harder and harder to distinguish between applications. During the final rounds of cuts differentiating between applications became very difficult as everyone met many of our guidelines. The committee ended up awarding grants to 17 students totally nearly $19,000. The funds went toward food and housing, plane tickets, and supplies for various creative projects.
Last-Minute-Money
The day after Big Money decisions were handed out, applications for the second phase of SOS, called “Last Minute Money” went live. All things considered, the scale of this portion of the SOS program was considerably smaller than its predecessor. Setting the disbursement cap at $500 and the application deadline at April 10, LMM (as its name suggests) was put into place to really fill up any holes that may have remained in the financial situations of the applicants. Many of the applications the committee received were asking to fund the cost of living in Portland (or the location of their internship, program, adventure, etc.) by helping them to pay for their rent, groceries, or transportation. Aside from these requests for basic sustenance, and other relatively inexpensive idiosyncrasies that varied from person to person, the committee saw a lot of people requesting money for plane tickets.
After the application deadline of Friday, April 10, the committee met on Saturday the 11th of April to interview all potential grant candidates. (Because this phase had a smaller applicant pool than Big Money, and because the program is inherently small-scale, the committee gave five minute interviews everyone that applied.) The interview process was much the same as it had been for Big Money, but with an added emphasis on the marginal benefit of the grant, so as to determine exactly what this relatively small grant would go toward. Deliberations were made on Sunday April 12, and decisions were handed out in an equally timely fashion by Monday the 13th.
What Now?
The whole SOS process will begin again fall semester 2015, at which point Senate will determine what sort of program should be enacted for the 2015-2016 academic year. It is possible that the summer grant allocation program will be continued, or that a new project may be put into place (one more geared toward capital improvements or establishing need-aware student body wage stipends), or that two projects are enacted simultaneously. Senate is actively seeking feedback on what sort of program would best serve the Reed community during the coming year, and will continue to do so during the beginning of Fall semester.
As far as the tangible results of this year’s program, the SOS committee is hopeful that the many fantastic applications received for both Big Money and Last-Minute-Money will help illustrate to administrators how other on-campus grant systems might become more comprehensive and better support the many diverse and exciting summer projects of Reed students.