Mariah Joyce
Chief Copy Editor
Student Government Association (SGA) recently held elections for their Budget Committee, which is tasked with determining the budgets for various student groups. In order to be considered for the Budget Committee, interested students filled out an application available on SGA’s website.
A group of SGA senators, along with SGA’s Executive Committee, then met to discuss all applications and ultimately voted on who would sit on the final committee.
This year, the committee will have ten members, three of whom are members of SGA and seven of whom are not. Sayantan “Sunny” Mitra ’16, Varunavi Newar ’16 and Linh Truong ’17 are all members of SGA who will sit on the committee; the non-SGA members are Lily Mohre ’16, Samuel “Joe” Weston ’16, Meredith Schervish ’15, David Morrow ’16, Emily Hrovat ’16, Matthew Barber ’17 and Priyanka Datta ’15. The committee will be chaired by Treasurer DJ Sullivan ’15. As the committee has an even number of members, Sullivan will cast any tie-breaking votes.
In deciding how to allocate available funds, the committee will first meet with each student group applying for funding for a 15-30 minute period to, according to Mitra, “get an overall understanding of the budget from the group itself and understand the group’s priorities.” These meetings will occur prior to spring break, and the committee will commence allocating funds only after this process is completed. Mitra is hopeful that “this will facilitate a relationship of mutual benefit and understanding between the committee and the student organizations.”
Two major factors are examined in deciding how much money to allocate to each group. First, the committee considers how group events will benefit the larger student community.
The sum of money available for budgets is a synthesis of the student activity fee paid by every student at the College, the committee considers how each group’s activities will benefit all students. Second, the committee considers the detail and accuracy of the budget proposal.
At this time, the exact amount of money the Budget Committee will have available has not yet been made public by the Business Office. However, there is expected to be at least a two percent increase on last year’s sum of $339,500.
As of press time, budget proposals have not yet been received by the committee, and not all student groups are required to submit budget proposals, the number of organizations this money will be divided amongst is still not clear.