Those $50 student activities charges may not seems like much compared to $18,000 in tuition every semester, but those fees add up, and deciding how to spend them is a task worth taking seriously. Despite The Hoya’s editorial board’s suggestions in “Give GUSA Final Funding Say,” (November 2), GUSA already has all of the funding power it wants and deserves. Giving GUSA control over individual student clubs’ funding would be unnecessary and ill-advised.
Right now, the GUSA Senate’s appropriations committee decides how much money each of its six advisory boards—the Student Activities Commission (SAC), the Georgetown Programming Board (GPB), Club Sports, Performing Arts, the Media Board, and the Center for Social Justice—receive. The appropriations committee is composed of thirteen students: one representative from each board and seven GUSA senators. Once the committee reaches a decision on how to split the over $250,000 of student activities fees between the six boards, the GUSA Senate approves the decision by a two-thirds majority.
GUSA already has significant control over student activities funding, including the final say, but it should not take over SAC’s job of allocating money among individual clubs.
“We are here to serve the student groups,” SAC chair Sophia Behnia (COL ’09) said. “They [GUSA] wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
SAC members have lengthy meetings once a week to approve funding for club events, and they spend enough time familiarizing themselves with the clubs to determine which groups deserve the money. By comparison, the GUSA senator who is supposed to sit in on SAC meetings and audit spending hasn’t made an appearance yet this semester, according to Behnia.
Fortunately, GUSA members realize that they are not qualified to take over SAC’s role.
“The Senate doesn’t want to decide how much money the Medieval Club should get for a pizza party,” GUSA Senator Matt Stoller (COL ’08) said.
GUSA already has significant financial control over student activities spending, and the student government should work on improving its own operations—a problem-free election would be a good start—before attempting to appropriate SAC’s job.
