News

SBC’s funds run low with new groups; not a ‘crisis’

In print | March 20, 2008

The past few years have been witness to an increasing number of chartered student groups on campus. Especially as the Charter Committee prepares to make a decision on the chartering of Punc/tum!!!, a proposed student-run visual arts magazine that will, according to Student Council Student Groups Advisor Paul Apollo ‘09, cost approximately $14,000 to publish two times per year, calculated efforts will be made on the part of the Student Budget Committee to accommodate any additional student group budget proposals while ensuring that large end-of-the-year events, like Worthstock, are still adequately funded and do not cause major setbacks in the year’s remaining budget.

Essentially a subcommittee of Student Council, SBC’s purpose is to fund chartered student groups and to oversee the student budget, which is comprised of the student activity fees students pay each year. This year alone the Charter Committee has granted charters to 13 new groups, including the Swarthmore Ping Pong Club, Swarthmore Organization for Israel and the Russian Club, requiring SBC to fund more than 100 groups within their limited budget.

This has been part of a recent trend of an increasing number of groups forming and expanding on campus. “Our primary priority is to ensure that these funds are dispersed to as many groups as possible for the remainder of the year,” SBC Manager Giannina Esquivel ‘08 said. "I think [the increasing number of student groups] has been a huge impact on our budget because we weren’t anticipating such a large number of groups."

While Esquivel said that SBC was glad to provide funding that would benefit both expanding and new student groups, she said it was not possible to anticipate the large number of new student groups that formed this year, and the subsequently large amount of funding that was required.

Currently, $20,000 remains in SBC’s budget for the remainder of the academic year with which they are responsible for funding budget proposals and supplementary requests, according to Esquivel.

In addition to funding student groups, another strain on SBC’s remaining funds is Worthstock, a large-scale, end-of-the-year music event held at the college, which will require a large chunk of the remaining budget. “I don’t think what we’re facing is a crisis,” Esquivel said. “It’s just a budget crunch that we need to work with right now.”

All About (SBC) Accounts

SBC holds four large accounts through which they can access and deposit funds including the student activities account, the Contingency fund, the Capital Replacement Fund and the FUNFund.

According to Esquivel the Contingency Fund, which currently holds $23,000, acts as a reserve of funds in the case of a budgetary emergency in which the student activities account were to deplete, whereas the Capital Replacement Fund is used to fund a replacement schedule for equipment held by student groups on campus whose value may depreciate over time. This includes student vans, SCCS equipment, WSRN studio equipment and other expensive, hard-to-replace items.

Unlike the Contingency Fund, the Capital Replacement Fund is not tapped into for any purpose other than the capital replacement objective, according to Esquivel. It is a separate fund to ensure that financial burden of capital replacement does not threaten the budgets of student groups, as well as to ensure that there are sufficient funds to replace important equipment over time.

The FUNFund is different than the Contingency Fund and the Capital Replacement Fund in that it provides funding to unchartered student groups. Established two years ago, FUNFund funding has been used for purposes as diverse as the financing of a photo exhibit to the purchase of a ping-pong table for Willets.

According to Apollo, who is chair of the Charter Committee and Student Council’s Representative on SBC, unspent student group funds have historically gone from the student activities account into the FUNFund, though that remaining money now automatically goes towards the Capital Replacement Fund.

“Historically, [this amount of money] has been pretty high,” Apollo said. “I certainly would like to see money in the FUNFund. I would like to see as much of that money in the hands of groups … to ensure that we can give out as much money as possible.”

This “rollover” money can also be used towards replacing the Contingency Fund when necessary. In the case of Punc/tum!!! magazine, if chartered, SBC would dedicate $10,000 of the rollover funds towards funding their budget proposal, according to Apollo. This would aid in offsetting the high cost, which would otherwise take a large toll on the regular student activities account.

The Activity Fee

Traditionally, budgetary strains have been ameliorated by a small annual increase in the student activity fee, the component of the college tuition that serves the purpose of funding student groups on campus. In the past three years, Student Council had continuously agreed with SBC’s proposal not to increase the student activity fee, although the decision was recently made to raise the fee by $16 for the 2008-2009 academic year, which will bring in more than an additional $20,000 for student groups funding next year.

According to Student Council President Peter Gardner ’08, the previous decisions not to increase the student activity fee were based on the fact that each year, SBC could always depend on unspent funds to balance the budget, leading them to believe that an increase in the student activity fee was unnecessary.

“This year we were put in the position of having a lot less money that we had in the past and more demand in the number of groups,” Gardner said. “I understand that there were legitimate reasons for not increasing [the fee], although I would always say that it’s wise to increase it at least with inflation. But it has put us in a tough position now.”

SBC & Publications

Despite the various measures that are taken towards ensuring sufficient funds for all current and aspiring groups, the budget has naturally faced the pressure of funding potentially worthwhile but pricey and large-scale initiatives like Punc/tum!!! while still ensuring that enough funds for smaller groups exist.

“Everyone on the chartering committee loves the idea [of Punc/tum!!!] … and it’s an area on campus that’s not being fulfilled at the moment,” Gardner said.

“There’s no other visual arts magazine on campus and there are a lot of art shows. So clearly there is interest on campus in visual arts, but that doesn’t have an outlet through a magazine. So, in theory, I’m a big fan of the idea. I think it would be well received. Practically, I don’t know if it’s feasible to have two issues a year come out,” he said.

Another example of an expensive publication funded by SBC is the college’s yearbook The Halcyon. Between $50,000 to $60,000 of the student activities budget is spent to publish the yearbook each year.

Although some concerns as to the quality of the yearbook have been raised, recent structural changes have occurred within the editorial staff of the yearbook, including reallocating the responsibilities of editor-in-chief position among four separate editors. According to Esquivel, these changes have been made by SBC in recognition of the heavy workload that prevented the staff from meeting deadline and will hopefully make the process easier for student editors.

The new changes are overseen by the Halcyon’s previous editor Sung Choi ’08 who is acting as a liaison to SBC.

The Future of the Budget

Although precautionary funds like the Contingency Fund are put aside for times like now when the budget is unusually tight, SBC recognizes that there is a limited budget with which they can work, according to Esquivel. “We’re going to be more conservative with the way we dispense with our funds,” she said.

As for groups that are looking to get chartered in the near future, there is always the possibility that they will not get chartered due to budgetary restraints, but may be able to obtain a budget next year.

Additionally, groups wanting to get chartered this year still have a chance, since the end of the year is nearing, meaning less money will have to be allocated for each new group to get them through the end of the semester.

“If I want to see a group chartered and it is too expensive this year, then I would charter them with the caveat that they won’t have a budget this year,” Apollo said. “might not appear this year, until next year, but it will actually come into existence.”

Ultimately, Apollo emphasized the Charter Committee’s commitment towards chartering as many worthwhile groups as they possibly can. “The entire idea of Swarthmore is if you have three friends and a dream, you can get anything done,” he said.

2007-2008 SBC Budget Allocations

Photocopying: $3,827.90
Group Supplies: $28,081.59
Individual Supplies: $2,300.00
Registration Fees: $28,399.00
Services: $111,006.47
Student Labor: $56,849.80
Transportation: $20,499.75
All-Campus Events: $10,621.56
Group Events: $1,040.00
Closed Events: $450.00
GENERAL SUBCODE TOTAL: $263,073.07

Budget figures were provided by SBC Manager Giannina Esquivel ’08. Note that these general categories do not include group-specific subcodes (such as “Performances” for Drama Board) or budgetary requests that were made and approved to SBC during the academic year. The total money allocated during the budgeting process for group-specific subcodes and special projects was $156,980.