My name is Cole Siefer and I am the co-director of the Student Government Association Finance Committee (SGAFC). While I agree with the general sentiment on campus that there are issues with the current system of student organization administration, I think that instead of criticizing it from the sidelines, Middlebury students should step up to take a more active role in creating change to the system. Student engagement is a critical piece of the Middlebury experience, and the challenges student organizations face should be reframed as opportunities to demonstrate our commitment to our peers. Recent student-led efforts have made improvements to bureaucratic processes, highlighting the opportunity we have to shape the student organization experience on campus.
First, a little background: The SGAFC is the student-run committee that distributes the Student Activities Fee (SAF) to student organizations. For the current academic year, 2023-2024, the SAF is $400, but will be raised to $500 for the 2024-2025 academic year. I work with my co-director and our committee members to allocate SAF funds. I love working on the Finance Committee — supporting the wide range of student interests on campus has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my Middlebury College experience. I was happy to read the Zeitgeist 6.0 survey and find that student organizations are so important to Middlebury students. It is a cause I am deeply invested in and working to improve.
I understand the view that the Students Activities Fee should be funding more than it is currently. Although $500 per student seems like a lot of money, the pot shrinks significantly when considering the wide variety of initiatives the Student Activities Fee funds. Middlebury is unique in that it gives the entire Student Activities Fee to our SGA Finance Committee. That means that we fund a wide variety of campus offerings beyond student organizations such as Break Buses, 10 O’Clock Ross, J-term Workshops, Intercultural Graduations, the BIPOC Hair Initiative, Summer Storage and much more.
To those of us involved in student organization administration, it has become clear that the formal process of creating an official organization is not suited for every initiative or idea. The process is very time and resource intensive, especially for the “overwhelmed” (to quote last week’s editorial) Student Activities Office. We’ve seen small groups of enthusiastic students start new clubs that ultimately fail to garner the wider support necessary to continue operations for years to come. Unfortunately, there are many clubs that exist for only a few years before ultimately going inactive. There are already over 150 recognized student organizations on a campus of over 2,500 people. While admirable, I think that motivating students to stay engaged with existing organizations is a more immediate and achievable goal than adding funding and resources to support the creation of new ones.
The Finance Committee and the SAO have been working to improve club administration and the experience of organization leaders, yielding important legislative successes in the past academic year. We’ve streamlined existing systems and processes to reduce the bureaucratic load on student leaders. The Ticketed Event Loan Program helps student organizations that sell tickets to their performances simplify their operating structure, plan events farther in advance, and keep more of their profits. Despite some issues with the program funding high-cost, low-return performances, it has been a marked improvement over the previous system. In partnership with the Student Activities Office, we have created new opportunities for students to get funding for their ideas to avoid the bureaucracy of registering an official student organization. For example, this year we launched the Exploration Fund, allocating $40,000 from the Student Activities Fee to financially and logistically support students’ initiatives and pilot programs without the hassle of setting up a new student organization. Lastly, the SGA set aside $200,000 from SGA Reserves (the destination for unspent SAF dollars) to start the SGA Seizing Opportunities Endowed Fund. The Fund expands the parameters of Opportunity Grants to help all students have access to the full Middlebury College experience, beyond traditional academically-focused financial aid packages.
I recognize that many people do not know that these new opportunities exist, and that these specific programs may not benefit everyone. However, they prove that we can create positive change as students if we work within existing avenues. Here is the question I pose to my peers: If you are upset about the administration of student organizations, how do you plan on getting involved and making positive change? One of the reasons many of us came to a small residential liberal arts college was because students can play an active role in shaping campus life. Students unhappy with the current state of affairs should work to pass legislation, talk to administrators, and mobilize their peers to create the change they want to see. Simply calling for the administration to address every perceived issue on campus is unproductive. We should be empowered members of the Middlebury community that do more than lament our circumstances.
There are many avenues for involvement in student organization administration that are currently underutilized. Join MCAB, the organization that runs much of the college’s social programming, including the upcoming spring concert. Run for an SGA senate position; the aforementioned Exploration Fund, Ticketed Loan Program and Seizing Opportunities Endowed fund were all created through SGA legislation. Lastly, you could join us on the SGA Finance Committee next school year; we’d love to have you. The power and responsibility to make Middlebury better lies, in large part, with us.
