A strange affliction seems to have taken hold in the A.S. Council, a certain activity-fee envy that makes student leaders compare the spending power of our student government to other campuses.

Apparently this envy is behind the current drive to raise student activity fees; despite rhetoric, councilmembers have yet to offer any concrete program manifesto that shows what the new money would be spent on.

It may be true that other UC campuses give more money to their student leaders — but, invariably, these leaders also do more for the students, in the form of services and programs. And no other major UC campus has a college system — each college council at UCSD also assesses a fee of its own — making comparisons of campuswide fees misleading.

Before students vote to pay more, many questions remain. First, the council must provide a concrete plan for any new windfall, lest it spend the new money profligately, as it did with the unexpected $100,000 discovered this fall.

The council must also show that it has institutions capable of responsibly allocating the money. Earlier this year, underhanded maneuverings by Pi Kappa Alpha and the Muslim Student Association exposed loopholes in rules governing travel funding for student groups; These loopholes must be closed, or the council will become simply a travel agency for orgs seeking free plane tickets.

Festivals like Sun God are the few A.S. services that most students actually partake in, explaining why some of the fee proposals try to capitalize on the popularity of the programming office. But students should beware: New dedicated fees for programming will also translate into a smaller programming allocation from the general A.S. budget.

As with many things, what matters for activity fees is not the size, but how they’re used.