On April 19, the Student Government Association (SGA) held their semesterly budget meeting. At the meeting, the SGA Budget Committee and the Committee on Student Interests Subcommittee Heads discuss the budget requests of various student organizations.
Any organization that wishes to be funded by the SGA in advance is required to submit a planned budget for the upcoming semester. According to the SGA’s Vice President of Finance, Christian Bonavita, a good budget is defined by certainty. “I love seeing organizations expand and request funds for new events and capital improvements, but a high amount of planning should happen beforehand, and a level of confidence and certainty should be expressed to the committee for success.”
In total, Student Organizations, Committees of the SGA, and The Office of Undergraduate Student Life have requested $815,507.47. The SGA made a total of $36,270.74 of objective and subjective cuts, where objective cuts are those that directly defy budget guidelines and subjective cuts are those that the budget committee thinks would have been unnecessary. This brought the total approved expenses for the 2020 Fall semester to $779,236.73. These funds were divided into $251,151.01 for Recognized Student Organizations, $103,585.72 for club sports, $241,750.00 for Student Life line items, and $182,750.00 for SGA line items.
Due to recent events, the Big Budget Meeting (BBM) was held online, but this did not significantly affect the proceedings. The meeting began at 8:30 a.m. and ended at 6:10 p.m., only 20 minutes after the planned end time of 5:50. This is impressive, considering the total planned meeting length of around 9 hours.
Budgeting itself was affected by the pandemic, as organizations were told to budget as though they would be starting from nothing next semester. Bonavita said, “All clubs were told to budget as if they had a clean slate for next semester because we still just don’t know what will happen to the money remaining in their accounts from this derailed spring semester. We didn’t want clubs under-budgeting and then losing out on activities next semester […] Thankfully, clubs seemed understanding of this, and I didn’t receive many concerns from their perspective on the ‘clean slate’ ask.”
This budget meeting is also notable for its inclusion of club sports in the process. Club sports have been placed under more direct control of the SGA as opposed to previous years, which has resulted in a more detailed investigation of the budgets of these organizations.
However, the decisions made by this meeting are not final. Instead they act as a recommendation for the SGA Senate, which has the power to alter the budget before it is accepted. According to Bonavita, “The final budget for next semester will be voted on as a Senate Resolution this Sunday, May 3rd at the Senate Meeting. The resolution will have all club budget decisions as well as all line items.”
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