As the newly elected SGA officials ponder how to reach out to students in the coming year, their discussions about new campus-wide events keep coming back to the same realization: There might not be enough money.
Student Government Association President Jonathan Sachs has said that one of his main goals is to continue the trend of starting new annual campus events – Crab Fest and the spring barbecue were a good start, he said – but added his predecessors have left him with little dispensable cash to help him try to boost student involvement.
Andrew Friedson, who served as SGA president this past year, wrote a slimmed-down budget earlier this semester in an attempt to be more fair to other student groups. But the SGA finance committee further cut the budget, forcing Friedson to alter the budget internally.
“They’ll be fine,” Friedson said. “The SGA as an organization has the greatest ability to overcome the problems of a tight budget.” He said organizations with large budgets have more flexibility to restructure and consolidate costs, whereas smaller groups can do little to make their budgets more efficient.
But Sachs said Friedson shouldn’t have cut the budget so much, knowing that the finance committee would likely make further cuts.
“I commend [Friedson’s] generosity with student groups and I hope I can emulate it,” Sachs said. “But I’m disappointed with the budget. I think he went too far [with trimming it down].”
Sachs said that because he had no say in writing or structuring the budget he was given, he has no choice but to do his best to work with it. One event he hopes to plan is an annual Spring Fling.
“I really want to accomplish all our initiatives, but it all costs money,” he said. ” We’ll work with [the budget] but we need money to make a tangible difference in the community.”
SGA Vice President of Finance Jason Hofberg said working with the budget “shouldn’t be a problem,” though he hopes to avoid future uncertainties and concerns by reforming the finance process as a whole.
“The first step for next year is building a solid committee,” Hofberg said. “Diversity is something we really need to look at. The members should be representative of all aspects of student life.”
Hofberg and Sachs also agreed that increasing the level of transparency in the finance process is vital to maintaining its legitimacy.
This year, the SGA took some steps to open up the finance process, but also implemented closed-door executive meetings and continued to keep finance appeals and deliberations closed to the public. Hofberg said this needs to change.
“Transparency is really important,” Hofberg said. “We are a public organization and it’s the students’ money.”
The finance process is traditionally run in a very systematic, by-the-book manner, the effects of which Sachs said he experienced first-hand. He said his time as president of College Democrats gave him an insight into student groups’ frustrations with the SGA’s finance proceedings.
“You need to respect that it’s inherently a very cold process and they do what they have to,” Sachs said. “But as SGA president, you need to ensure that when all is said and done, you will have a workable budget.”
Though it remains to be seen whether the budget will be workable, Friedson said he does not regret writing a tight budget. He said it would have been irresponsible to inflate the budget for the sake of mitigating possible cuts by the finance committee.
“Every student group president inflates their budget, but as student body president, I can’t do that,” he said. “This might not be great for SGA, but in the end, it helps student groups, and that’s what matters.”
langdbk@gmail.com
