Student Organizations Face Budget Crunch: $100,000 for 40 Clubs

Student organizations that have yet to receive funding will see a shortage of resources available to them in the 2015- 16 academic year. The Student Government Association (SGA) Finance Committee has already allocated around $900,000 of the $1,000,000 Student Activities Fee (SAF). Roughly 40 organizations have not yet applied for funding, including clubs sports like rugby and crew—as such, these student-run organizations are predicted to receive the bare minimum of what they require to operate.

Treasurer of the SGA and Chair of the SGA Finance Committee Aaron de Toledo ’16 discussed the situation at hand. Using the SGA as an example to demonstrate how a club’s finances operate, de Toledo said, “The SGA has a budget. If the SGA, whether it’s a senator or someone on the SGA committee, decides to spend money, they give me a receipt and I would have to approve it, sub- mit that receipt, and manage the budget.”

The Student Activities budget is funded from the SAF, which is collected from every student. The contribution each student makes to the SAF rises with inflation every year—it was

$410 for the 2015-16 academic year. Every dollar in the budget is allocated by students to student organizations or programming that benefits students, such as MiddView. The fund grants students independence from the administration.

“It’s not that simple,” de To- ledo says, “because, off the bat, there are some pretty big fixed expenditures. For example, MiddView is a three-year under- standing between the student government and the College where the student government and the College split the cost for the first three years... This is the third year, so this is the final year where that’s going to hit our budget. That’s $98,000 a year, so ten percent of our budget off the bat gone.”

Another large fixed expenditure is the senior yearbook, Kaleidescope ($42,500).

“[The] yearbook is something that is slightly controversial because most students don’t know that we have a yearbook and that’s a fair amount of money,” de Toledo added.

Other large programs that are fixed costs in the budget are the Senior Committee ($30,100), Feb Celebration Committee ($7,905), and various Commons activities ($36,800).

The largest fixed expenditure is the Middlebury College Activities Board (MCAB)1, which receives approximately one third of the SAF. Their budget this year is $337,650.

“Right off the bat, [the budget] is a lot less than a million dollars. From there, we go and allocate money to all of the various clubs. There are 175 student organizations.”

Once the fixed expenditures are covered, larger student organizations such as WRMC, Mountain Club, and club sports take up a huge chunk of the budget.

Though some might argue the need to distribute funding always with an equi- table dollar per member formula, de Toledo disagrees.

“We don’t have a fixed formula because having a fixed formula really doesn’t allow for any human aspect... Generally, we really try to look at impact when we fund budgets,” he said.