On Wednesday night, Student Activities Commission board members and student group leaders came together for a forum to discuss SAC funding guidelines. SAC has drawn heavy criticism in the past for its funding guidelines, which were created in the spring of 2010 at a closed meeting that involved no student group leaders. The meeting was meant to be an opportunity for SAC and student leaders to create a better system for both SAC and student groups.
Students cited four main problems with SAC funding guidelines: the criteria for allocating money, the schedule by which student groups need to hand in their budgets to SAC, that club events need to fall into neat categories like a dinner or a theater event, and that events need to be approved by SAC two times before clubs can hold them.
SAC commissioners at the forum focused on the first issue: possible changes for how SAC decides money allocation for clubs. The commissioners said they were planning on keeping a lump sum funding system, which means student groups will still need to finish their semester or yearly budgets in advance, and did not explicitly address solutions for the latter two issues at the forum.
SAC currently uses a bulk allocation funding system, where students specify the type of events they are planning, and SAC allocates funds according to that description. Students criticize this system because SAC grants a standard amount of money for event types regardless of the group that holds them, then doles out money for specific event types by averaging out the amount of money used by all clubs for such events.
“One of the most blatant examples for this is general interest meetings,” said Eitan Paul (SFS ‘12), former chair of the International Relations Committee. “Every club, whether it’s the International Relations Club that has 300 people coming to its interest meeting … or Iranian Cultural Society, which may have 20 people at the meeting, which my roommate was chair of, all [clubs] get the same [amount of money].”
SAC commissioner Jack Applebaum (COL ‘14) suggested the possibility of using a comprehensive budget system, in which each organization would submit detailed event budgets to SAC, including the monetary amount they were requesting for the event.
The last alternative is the criteria-based system, where clubs would be awarded money in a lump sum format based on certain measurements of group information, which could include past spending, group requests, group size, travel and large-scale special events.
The programming arc system, a type of lump sum system, also has been met with criticism from student leaders, but SAC plans on keeping the system.
In March, student groups must submit an outline for all events they plan from March to the following December. They must also request funding for all events in that period. Groups cannot plan new events after submitting the programming arc in March, even if that event does not require any funding.
“If we had invited Madeline Albright … to speak with us in November 2011, we need to invite her in February 2011 to see if she can come in November, in order to get her on the programming arc,” Paul said. “If she said no, but then in September 2011 said, actually, I can do it in December 2011, we’d have to say no.”
It’s not enough for groups to have their events approved when proposing their initial programming arc. Groups must also request SAC approval for any event two weeks before the event takes place. In essence, all events must be approved twice.
“What we learned, and this may not come as a surprise to a lot of people, is that the program arc system really underachieved,” SAC chair Andy Koenig acknowledged in his opening speech at the SAC forum.
Student group leaders also criticized the funding system for how it determines the amount of allocated funds. Groups can apply for funding events that don’t fall into one of SAC’s event categories, such as dialog events, but only once a year.
During the question and answer session after the meeting, SAC commissioners clearly wanted to work with student group leaders to streamline the funding process going forward, but student group leaders mostly spoke from past experiences of struggles with the unwieldy bureaucratic funding process.
The bureaucracy seems to extend beyond the control of SAC student commissioners. When Applebaum asked the group if student groups who exceed their budgets should be penalized, Paul pointed out that student groups do not have access to their online cost centers. Koenig responded, “neither do we,” eliciting student laughter around the room.
“I think that’s where a lot of dealing with this question is at this point,” Koenig said. “The University infrastructure really isn’t there yet. In terms of a timeline, that has to come up first. Because all too often it happens that at the end of the fiscal year a charge from March comes up. I honestly can’t speak to where the University is on that.”
