College Agrees To Absorb A Portion of SGA Budget

On Jan. 25, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, Dean of the College Shirley Collado and Vice President of Finance Patrick Norton agreed to resume funding several programs — including midnight breakfast and 24/7 open hours at the library during finals week — which the Student Government Association (SGA) had previously covered from 2008 to 2012. The administration also agreed to cover more significant portions of the club sports and commons’ budgets.

The decision came on the verge of a proposed spike in the student activity fee — a decision that likely would have been highly unpopular with students — which would have been the result of an overburdened SGA budget.

Earlier this fall, Peter Mattson ’14, chair of the SGA Finance Committee and SGA President Charlie Arnowitz ’13, assembled the Student Activity Fee Committee to assess the current budgetary revenues and expenditures with the aim of maintaining core SGA functions without raising the fee significantly.

The analysis found that for the current academic school year, total SGA revenues amount to $949,000. Expenditures to date however are approximately $1,040,054 and anticipated spending by the end of the year, $1,110,100.

With this money, the SGA funds over 200 campus organizations as well as a portion of the funding for each of the five commons budgets and a significant portion of the funding for the College’s 15 club sports.

The review also established that in recent years the SGA has also funded big-ticket items such as midnight breakfast and the newly reinstated MiddView orientation trips, as well as significant one-time expenses, including the YouPower Bike Room and new boats for the crew team.

“We started to realize that these spending patterns were unsustainable,” said Arnowitz.

“If nothing had changed, we would have had to raise the Student Activities Fee by about $65 (from the current $380) in order to balance the budget,” he added. “We didn’t want to do that, but we also didn’t want programming to suffer.”

Arnowitz explained that during the recession, the College looked to the SGA to pay for things like midnight breakfast and MiddView as a result of increased pressure on the College’s budget.

According to the Arnowitz, the SGA was able to pick up these additional costs, resulting from the fact that the primary source of the SGA budget is the student activities fee — a stable revenue stream.

The SGA budget remains relatively constant over time. For the 2012/2013 academic year student activities fee provided the SGA with nearly $950,000, and the College made up the minor difference between the fee revenues and SGA expenditures.

The review also showed that past SGA governments had overspent with respect to student organizations, allowing budgets to expand beyond the SGA’s capacity to pay.

Recognizing this budgetary strain, the SGA leadership, including Arnowitz, Mattson and SGA Chief of Staff Anna Esten ’13 began talks with the Collado, Norton, Dean of Students Katy Smith-Abbott and Liebowitz to come up with a solution.

According to Arnowitz, the discussions with the administration were fruitful, and the SGA was pleased that the College decided to both reabsorb old programs — like midnight breakfast and library open hours — and also take on some of the heavier costs of the commons and club sports budgets — all to the tune of nearly $200,000.

“We were gratified by the extent to which administrators listened to what we had to say,” he said.

“While they didn’t agree to absorb every expense or agree on every point, that was never the expectation. Instead, we had good and frank conversations. And on some issues — for examples, the commons — they ended up adopting exactly the compromises we proposed, to the dollar.”

One of the last items to be discussed by the committee is the financing the College’s yearbook, which has previously been given to all seniors free of charge, with an annual cost of approximately $53,000. The SGA stated that they will continue to work with the administration, Kaleidescope — the company that produces the yearbooks — and with other stakeholders to devise a sustainable funding model.