Budget allocations released for the 2016-17 school year

The College of Wooster’s ice hockey team, BSA and WAC were among the student groups that received the most funds.

Maddi O’Neill
Editor in Chief

The Allocation Committee released the 2016-17 distribution of the Student Activity Fee Monday, through an email from Assistant Director of Campus Life Rachel Messenger.

Campus Council (CC) approved the recommended allocations at its Thursday, April 21 meeting.

The Allocation Committee was made up of one representative from the Student Government Association (SGA)’s Budget Committee, one from CC’s Budget Committee and seven student applicants chosen by SGA, said Emily Howerton ’17, who chairs the SGA Budget Committee.

This year’s committee members were Howerton, Sebastian Northrup ’16, Franky Xu ’18, Wendy Kuzmishin ’16, Maggie Sestito ’18, Jahqwahn Watson ’17, Katie Stock ’17, Cece Azar ’17, Matt Woodward ’19 and Lauren Pugliese ’17, who filled in on the committee for Howerton when she could not attend meetings.

Altogether, the committee was responsible for splitting the $329,458 Student Activity Fee among well over 100 campus student groups that requested funding. The Student Activity Fee comes from the $170 fee all students pay as part of the comprehensive cost of attending Wooster and is distributed annually to student organizations.

The total amount of money being allocated for the 2016-17 academic year went up slightly from last year ($311,095), but has gone down since 2013-14 ($336,911.75) and 2014-15 ($332,348.85).

Some of the groups that received the largest allocations include the Wooster Activities Crew (WAC), the ice hockey team, the Black Student Association (BSA), Black Women’s Organization (BWO), the Equestrian team, the Moot Court team, Delta Phi Alpha and The Wooster Voice.

Howerton said the process of splitting up the fund is a difficult one.

“It’s not an easy process, you have over a hundred applications and a finite amount of money,” she said. “We really work hard to make consistent decisions.”

Some of those decisions are out of the committee’s hands because they are made by the CC Budget Committee, which sets allocation policies that apply to all student groups and their funding requests.

Because of these guidelines from CC, much of the funding requested by student groups is non-fundable. But Howerton said that once non-fundable requests have been removed, there is still not enough funding to cover all requests.

“Some groups asked for a lot of things that we just can’t fund,” she said.

At that point, the Allocation Committee may decide on other expenses it will not fund in the interest of ensuring as many students can access the Student Activity Fee as possible.

“Food that’s not relevant to an event isn’t technically stated in the policy [as non-fundable] but the committee may not choose to fund it because we don’t see it as a good use of the Student Activity Fee money,” Howerton said.

Northrup, who co-chaired the Allocation Commmittee with Howerton, said, “We try to be as nonbiased as possible.”

One major recipient of the allocations was WAC, which received $118,461.

WAC President Sophie Nathanson ’17 said these funds are necessary for putting on large, all-campus events.

“WAC gets a large portion of the Student Activities Fee because WAC is a club that hosts events that are open to the entire student body,” she said. “This money facilitates a wide variety of events for every student who attends the College to enjoy. Having nonacademic and inclusive events is extremely important to maintaining a healthy campus climate.”

WAC’s total budget was cut by more than $35,000 last year when it lost administrative funding due to the sustainable budget process, which trimmed aspects of the College’s spending all over campus. WAC has not been allocated administrative funding this year, either, according to Nathanson.

“Through verbal comparisons, other colleges give their ‘WACs’ a very significant figure of money,” Nathanson said. “It is recognized universally that organizations that host events encouraging every type of student to attend will benefit the social connections between students and their attitudes toward the College.”

More information about the allocations can be found in the graphic above, and details of the allocations granted to each group can be found in the links sent to students by Messenger in her email to campus.

According to that email, student groups may set up appeals meetings, which “will be held Wednesday, April 27 from 8-10 a.m. and Monday, May 2 from 8-10 a.m. in Lowry 118.” Students can sign up for appeals meetings in the Campus Life Office in the basement of Lowry.