In the past several years, the committee, under the guidance of treasurers like Samantha Siegal ’08 and Anneliese Koehler ’09, has been working very hard to arrive at a ‘fair funding’ policy. Topics of note are events during breaks, transportation, accommodations when traveling and food for events. It is safe to say that there is no one rule that dominates the B.C.’s recommendations (speaking of which, the B.C.’s function is to make recommendations to the senate, not to actually allocate the money to organizations, a point that is commonly misunderstood by most of the campus). There are, however, precedents that guide recommendations to ensure that they are consistent with past decisions and to dispel any existence of favoritism or arbitrariness. The precedent process may not be perfect, but it is as close as we can come to some measure of funding stability.
In our current year, several members of the B.C. have been advocating for flexibility, arguing that our precedents have been too rigid and don’t address the constantly changing dynamics of events on and off campus. This is an admirable effort to alleviate the stress of fund-seeking on campus, and with moderation, could be beneficial to the overall campus environment. However, the same idea of flexibility has, with our limited budget (hard to believe, but a $700,000 budget runs dry pretty quickly), led to the current senate’s appearance of being in financial crisis in recent weeks. Generally, spending the entire student activities fund is positive, as it is beneficial for the campus overall, and avoids creating a reserve like the one that was made public to the campus in fall 2006. Simultaneously, we must continue to encourage and facilitate the use of other funding sources to extend the limitations of our budget to cover at least most of the semester. This entails, as has been the case with community service organizations this year, having senators, particularly B.C. members, work with students to facilitate their requests to the appropriate academic departments and funds.
One of the longest-standing points of contention between the B.C. and the senate and the larger student body is the existence of a $200,000 reserve fund (which now has closer to $150,000). This particular issue highlights what has been wrong with B.C. policies before 2006, when the reserve’s existence was first disclosed to the campus community, and what work lies before the B.C. and the next treasurer. Few know that the reserve is not actually tapped through the standard B.C. discretionary request process. It is a separate fund, and to access it requires following a series of guidelines set forth by senate vote. The most important of these guidelines is the requirement that spending from the reserves is for the long-term benefit of the campus. The money is designated for capital projects like President Pan Venkatraman’s ’09 initiative to purchase additional vans. The money that contributed to the reserves does not inherently belong to the current generation of Amherst students, and as such, spending from the fund should benefit more than present students. This is likely new information to most of the campus, and this lack of information demonstrates exactly how the B.C. and senate are disconnected from the larger student community. More needs to be done here.
The budgetary process has, in most respects, been as thorough as a group of elected student representatives can create. The next logical step would be to make sure that the student body at large has full access to the committee and full knowledge of its workings. No student group should ever feel that the B.C. is a dictatorial group of unapproachable students; every member is a senator who is elected to serve the student body. The next treasurer and group of B.C. members should work towards making the funding process transparent through free and easy access to all of its decisions, as well as expanding the role of “B.C. representative” for all groups. Furthermore, greater emphasis should be placed on making sure clubs leave the weekly B.C. meetings understanding fully the committee’s decisions and rationales, as well as what they can do to secure the funding they need. When students feel that the B.C. and the treasurer are vehicles of support for groups to accomplish their goals, the campus will truly have a fully functional budgetary process that fosters great student activities.