By: Houston Beckworth – Contributor
Jacob Koh – Contributor
“Are they [Student Association] laundering money? How do they have enough to pay for this?”
If you’ve spent more than a semester on campus, you probably know that Southern’s student organizations spend lots of money, whether it’s on big events such as cultural nights or on the drippiest merch. Have you ever wondered where that money is coming from?
Student Association (SA) is pushing for financial transparency. If you are a student, your senator has likely sent you a report of SA’s budget for the semester. However, we—SA Senate’s finance committee—want to give you some more information about how we fund student organizations (clubs).
If you didn’t know, as a student, you gave 153 big Washingtons to SA by enrolling at Southern, and we set aside about $5 for funding student organizations (totaling $15,000). Last semester, we took $10,000 from that pool and gave it to 33 different groups, but there was drama.
Of the 43 different groups that applied, some did not meet eligibility requirements. We require several super simple requirements: (1) We want each group to have done community service last semester or explain how they will do community service, if they are new. (2) We want to know that an organization is doing fundraisers so that we’re not wasting money on people who don’t need it. (3) We also want to know why the money is needed. (4) We want each group to have reported member dues (i.e., how many people paid to be part of their group).
We then split the pool of $10,000 among the 33 remaining groups. In past years, this has been a bit subjectively based on membership, but this year, one member of the finance team built a calculator to simplify the process and minimize bias. The calculator first evenly divides the money by the number of clubs before further thinning the amount of money deserved on three criteria: (1) How many members have paid to be part of the group (45%)? (2) Has the group been consistent in submitting in reporting meetings (15%)? (3) How active is the group (40%)? To minimize subjectivity that might come with simply giving a lump sum of money for these criteria, each group was graded on a scale of 1 to 3 in several different categories (fundraising plans, event plans, and why the money is needed). The more ambitious and purposeful your plans, the higher your score!
After all of this, we have a starting amount for each club. However, there is still money in the pool, since the percent-based thinning of money saves some for more- deserving organizations. To fix this, we do the cycle again, multiplying the previous allocations by membership, which gives us our final numbers. To give mercy to new clubs, we give them a 40% boost. We also reduce the money going to departmentally funded clubs (30%) and penalize those who applied late (10%).
“Having said all of this, we just want your money to be used fairly. For example, some groups last semester were frustrated because they were service-oriented and didn’t get any funding. If they had simply run a service event (for example, the kind that takes place on MLK Service Day), we could have given them money. We don’t want anyone to lose out. It is easy to raise questions about money with ongoing issues such as low wages or the cost-to-quality ratio of food, but we don’t want it to be this way. We believe it starts with us, the students, through our transparency.”
–Houston Beckworth
“We in the Senate prioritize transparency and collaboration with the student body. We are dedicated to the success of our student organizations and campus clubs. We hope that the financial support we are able to provide can help them all thrive, contributing to the positive and uplifting atmosphere of Southern Adventist University.”
–Jacob Koh
