There is a story about cobras that is set in India during the time of British imperialism. The story goes like this:
In colonial India, there were lots and lots of venomous cobra snakes. This was a problem for the British government, so they decided to implement a plan that would reduce the population of cobra snakes. The policy they arrived at was a bounty system. People could get paid if they brought in a dead snake. It worked well for a short time. It didn't take long though for people to realize it was very profitable to breed the snakes, kill a few, turn them in and then breed more. The people in charge in Delhi figured out what was going on, and in a panic they immediately shut the program down. Now these impromptu snake breeders had a bunch of snakes and nothing to do with them, so they let them go, and ultimately increased the snake population of colonial India. Oops.
This is a story of the appropriately named cobra effect — when a proposed solution only exacerbates the problem. In economic terms, it's called a perverse incentive. Here at George Fox, we go to chapel, and chapel suffers from a perverse incentive.
For those people reading this who are not students of Fox, regular chapel happens twice a week. Most students (seniors are the exception) are required to attend a certain number of them and are fined if they do not fulfill the minimum by the end of the semester. There's worship, a message and announcements are read. I do not "have a problem" with chapel. As a Christian school, mandating that time be set aside for our God is a just and righteous decision. It's not even hard really. Chapels are short, and the required attendance is easily met. But chapel has a problem. Any event that big requires funding. I'll tell you a secret: that funding comes from the fines that, in turn, come from students who don’t attend chapel. So the more students that attend chapel, the less money chapel gets. Does this sound like a good business model to you?
It’s not. It’s a perverse incentive. The better chapels get, the harder it is to put on the event. I do not mean to insinuate that this is an intentional and evil scheme to eliminate the practice of chapel from George Fox, but I do mean to call out the financial wisdom in such a decision, if there is any there to begin with.
Chapel is a priority at Fox, and that should be reflected in the budget. Priorities only work in complex organizations if they are true across all the departments or components. A house divided cannot stand. A ministry department, financial department and academic department cannot most efficiently and effectively educate if they are not working with the same overarching objectives. An event that is directly hampered by its very success cannot possibly have consistent growth or improvement over time. George Fox University, I know it's hard. I know it's a herculean task keeping 2,276 undergraduate students as well as a host of graduate students learning, but it's also a herculean task paying for school. So, let's get our priorities straight.
