Bon Voyage is a farewell event for seniors in their third year that’s funded by their immediate juniors. This year’s Bon Voyage is to be held on the 22nd of April. It’s an event that has been considered a tradition of sorts. A tradition that may happen to involve a bit of unfair transactions. The Recreational Activities Forum, also called RAF, organizes Bon Voyage every year. Apart from this, they’re also the ones who screen the weekly movies in the auditorium and organize Teachers’ Day Celebrations. They’re not affiliated with the SU and do not involve themselves with the business of fests.
How does RAF get the money it needs to pull off an event like this? At the moment, RAF has no external sponsors and is entirely funded by students. For the current edition of Bon Voyage, RAF is deducting ₹420 from the 2016 batch, summing up to a total of ₹2,72,160. An additional amount of ₹30,000, the money that was carried over from Teacher’s Day is also being used1. Every year RAF collects significantly more money during Teachers’ Day than they need and this ‘surplus’ is diverted to balance the BV budget. How can we justify taking such a large amount from students without telling them what they’re paying for?
The deductions for Bon Voyage have increased by 30% each year from ₹250 in 2016 to ₹325 in 2017 and finally ₹420 this year2. Following this trend, for the 2018 Batch Bon Voyage, they will have to pay slightly less than ₹1000. For comparison, ATMOS 2017’s GBM was held to convince the General Body for a deduction of ₹200 rupees for three days of one of the best fests in the country. Should we really be spending twice the amount for what is effectively a single awards ceremony and dinner?
The constitution3 dictates the necessity of a GBM for any deductions proposed to the general body.
The lack of any official consent of a majority for compulsory deductions makes the current proceedings wrong, both morally and legally.
We reached out to RAF to listen to their side of the story. According to them, the increased price this year was due to the decreased number of students in the 2016 batch, who would be footing the bill for this Bon Voyage. However, they cannot justify the increase in deductions over the last two years, as it was organized by a different RAF. RAF claims that there have never been any issues since its inception, nor was there ever a GBM. They also validate the deduction by saying “the paying batch would be repaid through the next batch and so forth”. The deductions were approved by the Associate Dean SWD, the CRC and the President4.
In the process of celebrating our seniors, have we really made sure that everyone is comfortable with paying such a significant amount? Why is it acceptable for the administration to deduct my money without my consent? This is the third un-consented5 deduction from students in the past few months. Does the silence of the EC, CRC and SUC indicate that all of this is legal?
Is this a sign of apathy and lenience towards deductions for events on campus without the approval of the payers? Should this continue?
Footnotes:
1 The total deduction for Teacher’s Day was ₹71,000 By tradition, it’s something that has been funded by freshers. Roughly Rs. 30,000 of this amount was left over after the celebration, and this was carried over to fund other activities. With almost half of this being sent towards Bon Voyage, is this fair to the freshers some of whom were allegedly not entirely comfortable with contributing. Why deduct this much if it’s unnecessary?
2 A breakdown of how the money will be spent, according to a RAF member:
3 SECTION XXII: REFERENDUMS
4 The exact procedure by which the deductions were approved is still unclear.
5 The other two un-consented deductions were for the two moonlight dinners organised by the messes. Also, the deductions for Pearl and ATMOS of of ₹1000 and ₹200 respectively, while passed through GBMs and is legal, might still be morally un-consented as money is still being deducted from people who voted against/didn’t agree to the motion.
Article by Shanmukh Padmanabhuni and Rohit Dwivedula
Date: 17/April/2018
The Journal Club 
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