SGA’s Budget Committee expands role and jobs

Meeting frequency will increase to once a week

Waverly Hart
News Editor

Recently, The College of Wooster’s Student Government Association (SGA) has been making plans to expand the role of their Budget Committee in order to make SGA run more efficiently.

Currently, the Budget Committee’s main purpose is to select members for the Allocations Committee, the group that decides how much money is allocated to each student organization.

Each year, when the Budget Committee receives a list of applicants, the members meet to discuss who should be picked for the Allocations Committee. They then disband and do not meet again until the following year.

Isaac Weiss ’20, an at-large senator and current chair of the Budget Committee, says that the main goal of the proposed reformations of SGA’s Budget Committee is to have the group meet more frequently.

“The goal with the changes is to ensure that members of the Budget Committee meet regularly. Every other committee meets once a week, and that’s where we want Budget [Committee] to be as well,” said Weiss.

In addition to meeting once a week, Weiss also plans to coordinate and communicate with Campus Council’s Budget Committee in order to make SGA’s run more efficiently. Weiss believes that the Budget Committee could have a much larger role than it does now.

“The plan is to really look at what the other committees do, look at what Campus Council’s Budget Committee does and find the gaps where regular work could be done and possibly have SGA’s Budget [Committee] do that kind of work,” said Weiss.

In order to achieve this higher level of efficiency, SGA members plan on identifying instances when SGA is not doing things that they could with regard to budgetary objectives. For example, when SGA decided to change the prices for PODS, the Student Services Committee ran an analysis to see how SGA could reduce the prices for students. Weiss believes projects such as these are a new role the Budget Committee could handle.

“Projects like that would be a good way for us to allow the Budget Committee to have work to do during the school year. I would like to see our committee tackle things like this, and more,” said Weiss.

Maggie Sestito ’18, the president of SGA, says that SGA and Campus Council are seeking to engage in more collaboration and communication so that they can serve Wooster’s student body more effectively.

“We have run into many issues in the past having a Budget Committee separate from Campus Council’s budget committee. SGA’s Budget Committee existed with the purpose of aiding through the allocations process and then simply disappeared until the following year. We believe that reforming the Budget Committee and working with Campus Council will allow for a much more effective and efficient Budget Committee, especially when it comes to allocations,” Sestito stated.

“We could make SGA more efficient and effective. I’m hoping that when we finish reworking the committee, we can have every part of SGA running as smoothly and as efficiently as possible. We want to have all of our committees [running] properly and [doing] as much work as they possibly can do,” Weiss stated.

Currently, SGA does not have any concrete plans to reform the Budget Committee. Expanding the Committee’s powers and tasks would require an amendment, with 2/3 of members approval, to SGA’s constitution. Members of SGA are hoping the Committee will be reformed before the end of 2018.