The Division of Student Affairs approved a new student tuition funding distribution on Jan. 24. The plan, which goes into effect fiscal year 2015, cuts Student Activities Commission and raises Advisory Board for Club Sports tuition funding by $74,954 and $62,028, respectively. Overall funding for SAC, ABCS, and the four other student advisory boards, however, will not change because of adjustments in funding from Georgetown’s Coca-Cola contract and the student activity fee.
According to Jack Appelbaum (COL ‘14), former SAC Chair, the previous tuition funding distribution had not changed since 2001 and did not reflect the current sizes and needs of the advisory boards. Since 2001, ABCS, for instance, has grown from 10 teams to 31.
“It’s been a long time since the way tuition dollars are allocated to advisory boards has been looked at,” Appelbaum said. “It’s an outdated system.”
The Division of Student Affairs funds the CSJ Advisory Board for Student Organizations, Media Board, Performing Arts Advisory Council, Georgetown Program Board, ABCS, and SAC mainly using tuition money.
In the past, the proportion of club budgets funded by Student Affairs has been inconsistent. According to the terms of the reallocation, however, Student Affairs will now finance 27.5 percent of each board’s expenses.
According to Erika Cohen-Derr, assistant dean for student engagement, each board’s overall funding will remain the same. Clubs will derive the rest of their funding from the student activity fee and Coca-Cola grant, and they can request the rest of the money they need by submitting requests to the GUSA Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, which controls the student activity fee.
“We aren’t actually going to be receiving more money as a whole, but we are going to get more guaranteed money,” said Alex Skarzynski (SFS ’15), chair of ABCS, which was previously only funded $7,000 tuition dollars. “It’s nice and reassuring to know that at the bare minimum we’re getting more than seven thousand dollars because we wouldn’t be able to do all that we do for our teams with that [amount].”
Overall tuition dollars going to advisory boards will be lowered by $66,375 between fiscal years 2014 and 2015. When asked about the decrease, Cohen-Derr said this money was originally used to fund regular expenses, such as training and Student Activity Fair logistics, and Student Affairs will now instead “fund those directly.”
GUSA FinApp Chair Séamus Guerin (COL ‘16) wrote in an email to the Voice that he thinks although the funding redistribution is “more of an organizational change than it is a significant change to student life … it will have a long term benefit in making things more consistent.”
