Budget cuts
Each semester, the SGA’s Committee on Financial Affairs is responsible for allocating funds from the Student Activities Fee to student groups. The fee of about $75 each year for full-time students is among the fees all students pay in addition to tuition. Much of the fee goes to Student Entertainment Events and the Student Government Association’s operating budget as well as resources such as the Undergraduate Student Legal Aid Office and the Student Organization Resource Center. The remainder is allocated to SGA-recognized student groups to support their programs and events.
Last academic year, the SGA disbursed more than $450,000 in funding to student groups. Pending SGA approval today of the past month’s allocations today, the SGA will have allocated about $135,000 in September and October alone.
As large as the amounts of funds being given out are, the demand for funds is even higher. So far this year, groups have requested nearly $314,000. This creates a problem for the financial affairs committee — groups might request more money than is available in a given month.
In the past, when the SGA funding process only had a primary and secondary deadline each academic year, rather than the current rolling process, budget cuts were simply understood as a part of the process. After the new rolling system started last fall, the financial affairs committee never had to make overall cuts. On average, groups requested less funding than they had in the past, most likely because of groups adjusting to the new process. In addition, there was an incredibly high amount of unspent funds from the previous year. Now that the process has been in place for a full year, groups understand how to use it and request more money. With higher requests and no unspent funds from last year to add to the pot, we were forced to cut all budgets for December by about 22 percent, which impacted 26 programs.
Obviously, no one likes to hear, “You did everything right, but you’re still only getting 80 percent of what you asked for.” That has been by far the toughest situation my committee and I have been in this year. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news. However, I feel that I’d much rather bear the news of a 22 percent cut on programs than a 60 percent or higher cut, which is what groups were facing at first. The committee was able to enact caps on certain types of expenses and transfer some money from the emergency Group Help fund to decrease the cut on all groups from 60 percent to 22 percent.
I’d like to encourage students to focus on the amount of money SGA has given out rather than the cuts that unfortunately had to be made. In two months alone, SGA has allocated nearly $135,000 to fund 93 unique programs for 84 different student groups. These groups and their programs reflect the diverse array of student interests at this university. This is exactly how the Student Activities Fee should be used — to fund something for every student at this university.
I hope this sheds a little more light on the current SGA funding situation for group members who use the process. For any specific questions or concerns, please always feel free to contact me by email.
Brian Nowak is a senior finance and information systems major and vice president of finance for the Student Government Association. He can be reached at sgavpfinance@umd.edu.
