Mariah Joyce
News Editor
At the end of each school year, chartered campus groups apply for funding through the Student Government Association (SGA) for the coming school year. Funds are drawn from an account, which pools the student activity fees collected from the student population at the beginning of the academic year.
Because of this, each chartered group’s budget is evaluated on how the group would benefit the campus community as a whole, and funds are awarded to organizations on the basis of this judgment.
Any funds which are not used by the individual groups are put back into the account at the end of the year. According to Campus Council figures, a total of $68,910.33 in unspent funds was returned by student organizations at the end of the 2013-14 academic year. This figure brings the total amount of funds in the Campus Council account up to $122,106.18. The majority of the approximately $70,000 returned at the end of last year is now available to be redistributed to student organizations who go through the appropriate appeal process for more funding.
“I personally would like to see this money go back to student organizations,” said Campus Council Chair Elliot Wainwright ’15. “The excess of funds allows us to address many of the budget appeals that were brought forth at the end of the school year and [will be brought forward] in the days to come at the beginning of this year.”
Groups that appealed for more funding at the end of the 2013-14 academic year include Common Grounds, Cricket Club, Film Club, ASiA (Asian Supporters in Action) and WooUndead, which is Wainwright’s own group.
Although there is a large surplus of available funds, it was suggested at a Campus Council meeting on Aug. 28 that some funding requests, such as lamps for the substance free program house and coffee shop Common Grounds, might instead fall under the purview of Residence Life.
“[Re-allocation of funds] won’t simply be a matter of throwing money at any appeal or request that comes our way,” cautioned Wainwright.
“The Budget Committee will still have its normal conversations with the organizations and will analyze their requests on the basis of things like breadth of campus impact, whether the request falls within Council policy and the amount of detail put into the budget.”
Several members of Campus Council also expressed frustration about the amount of funding that was awarded and then not used. Of the 93 organizations awarded funds for the 2013-14 year, 30 groups spent 90-100 percent of their allocated funds, 10 groups spent 70-89 percent, 20 groups spent 40-69 percent, 18 groups spent 1-39 percent and 15 groups spent nothing at all.
“Creating an action plan to prevent such a large amount of funds from being unused by student organizations will be one of the main initiatives tackled by the Council Budget Committee this year,” said Wainwright.
While a Budget Committee Chair has not yet been elected, suggestions in last week’s Campus Council meeting included requiring a more detailed budget proposal from all groups, and especially requiring more information for all groups applying for funding in order to bring speakers to campus.
“A fully-fledged action plan for large scale events that have off-campus components (e.g. speakers, etc.) will likely need to be drafted by the student organizations,” said Wainwright.
Wainwright plans to communicate with the leadership of all student organizations about the opportunity to apply for more funding in the coming weeks once the chair of the Budget Committee is chosen.