The title on Ben Davidson's business card reads "assistant dean of students,” but there have been days when it might as well have said “fund-raiser.” As director of Stanford’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Resources Center, Davidson has spent much of his time figuring out how to pay for programs that he and the students he serves want to run. He’s lobbied administrators from academic departments, other divisions of student affairs—even student groups that enjoy ASSU funding—trying to scrape together money. His colleagues at Stanford’s four ethnic centers, the Asian-American Activities Center, the Black Community Services Center, El Centro Chicano and the Native American Cultural Center, haven’t had it much better. Every couple of years, they’ve asked the administration for $25,000 in what they call “soft money.”
That soft money has now turned into hard cash—a $25,000 increase in the annual base budget for each of Stanford’s six community centers, including the Women’s Center. Each organization also received an additional $25,000 this fall, which will likely be renewed in future years.
Several students pushed for the increase, forming a group called Concerned Students for Community Centers. But Morris Graves, associate dean of students and former director of the BCSC, says the change also reflects shifts in administration priorities. “The time was right,” Graves says. “Stanford’s new leadership is much more receptive to looking at the needs of the student affairs arena.”
The additional money has the directors dreaming of ways to strengthen their offerings. Davidson hopes his center will now be able to afford higher-profile speakers—think Martina Navratilova—and expand a lunchtime program at which faculty members discuss how their sexual orientation and gender identity have affected their careers. BCSC director Jan Barker Alexander will increase her budget for an annual awards dinner that draws parents from around the country. (Attendance has grown from about 140 to 315 in recent years.) All four ethnic centers expect to bolster a program that teaches student leaders to work for social change.
“The funding has a symbolic value in addition to helping us with our programs,” says Davidson. “It is also recognition of the very important work that centers do on campus, especially for students who are members of historically marginalized groups.”
