The Student Congress held its meeting Monday night to discuss new budget plans for the upcoming year.
Alexander Liu, the Student Association (SA) president, announced that major SA institutions such as the Student Association Programming Board (SAPB), Harpur’s Ferry and Off Campus College Transport (OCCT) have been operating with budget deficiencies for the past several years. OCCT and Harpur’s Ferry are also planning to expand, and the growth of these groups will require more funding.
To remedy this, Liu, a senior majoring in philosophy, politics and law, introduced a two-part legislation to restructure the SA budget and improve spending.
The first part of the legislation is an activity fee referendum, which would raise the fee by $3.50. Three dollars would fund OCCT expansion and compensate for the rise in minimum wage, while the other 50 cents would help pay for equipment for a third Harpur’s Ferry ambulance.
The entire undergraduate student body must vote to increase the student fee. Members of Congress were confident it would be approved, but will meet next week to approve a ballot initiative for the campus.
The second part of the legislation would give money to the SAPB and Student Group Allocations for large-scale concerts and performances. Three dollars of every student’s fees will be reallocated from the housing community portion of the student activities fee for this purpose to keep the fund increase relatively low. The SAPB would get $1.50 and another $1.50 would go to Student Group Allocations.
Chris Zamlout, the SA executive vice president and a senior majoring in philosophy, politics and law, said this change will not affect community traditions or events, but will limit the giveaways that are currently funded through their budgets.
According to Liu, the number of student groups on campus is rising, and more funding is necessary.
“We’ve been taking the same amount of money and dividing it up over a larger number of groups,” Liu said. “Each of these groups will need more money.”
Liu said this extra money would allow each club to grow to their maximum potentials. He also said that the board does not rely solely on student fees; SAPB also reaches out to other organizations like the Financial Committee to ask for funding.
According to Liu, the revised financial constitution requires only a slight change in the student activity fee to preserve spending efficiency.
“We don’t want to increase the fee too much if we don’t need that much money,” he said. “We value efficient spending.”