The Student Federation spent more than its budgeted amount last semester because of extra funds it found, so they have generously given to the students who came to them with fund requests. All the same, the federation is routinely accused of “hoarding” its money and is often seen as “stingy.”
While Student Fed was very cautious about spending money in the past, many current members of the federation said they are desirous to spend money on students and want to hear their funds proposals.
Student Fed money comes from student fees, and it decides how to give money back to students in the form of campus improvement and funds for clubs and events, etc.
Treasurer sophomore Jacob Thackston said Student Fed gets around $50,000 to spend every semester, “but $35,000 is already allocated to publications and some things for senior class and miscellaneous expenses.”
That means the federation has $15,000 in the discretionary fund to spend on students each semester.
“We want to spend at least $15,000 each semester,” Thackston said. “Right now we have $46,000 to spend, and we’re getting another $15,000 for this semester after the Business Office processes student fees, so we’ll have $61,000 in like three weeks. Please ask us for money.”
Student Fed has such a large discretionary because of rollover fees discovered last school year.
“A couple years ago we discovered that student fees had been rolling over, so most of that is still there [in the discretionary],” Thackston said. “Over the past semesters we’ve been spending that surplus.”
But the federation can’t spend its money if students don’t ask for it.
“The street goes both ways,” Director of Student Activities Anthony Manno said. “It takes some effort, you have to propose a week in advance, [and then] you have to go to multiple meetings, fill out paperwork.”
Manno said he is willing to help students with the process should they have any questions.
“The process and unfamiliarity for sure [prevents people from coming to Student Fed], and for some people it’s a little intimidating, but there’s no reason to be intimidated,” Manno said.
While now the federation is very willing to spend money on students, it wasn’t always so generous. Senior Annie Teigen, who served on Student Fed one year as the Pi Beta Phi representative and one year as secretary, said there have been years when it struggled to balance fiscal responsibility with spending.
“It was very different,” Teigen said. “There wasn’t much communication within the federation, and there were also some pretty strong personalities. To their credit, they wanted to be very careful and responsible with what was going on with money, and the president at the time really wanted to rework the budget. The general sentiment of the leadership was to be as good stewards as possible with the money, but a lot of times that ended up being a lot more selective as to who was warranted money, which in some ways is good, but as we know with the Tower Light debacle, it can get a little bit heavy-handed.”
It was during this administration that the federation spent very little, all the while accumulating student fees over the semesters. In the more recent administrations, Student Fed has made an effort to be more generous with funds, especially since it has such a large surplus.
“We have this reputation of not being willing to give, which I would love to change, but we can only really give where the students ask for money, so we’re limited by the scope of requests we receive,” Thackston said. “By and large we really only have the ability to spend on things asked for by students.”
At the same time, Student Fed struggles to reach students and encourage them to ask for money.
“I wanted meetings in the Student Activities office this year because I wanted more transparency,” Manno said. “There’s definitely room for improvement, we send out fund request emails once a semester, but you know how emails work, most of mine get deleted. I think it’s something that needs to be discussed [advertising Student Fed].”
“We’d love for people to come to us with small ideas, big ideas, any way for us to give the funds back to them,” Thackston said.
Thackston wants to send out more emails and advertise via word-of-mouth. According to Thackston, Student Fed can’t receive enough proposals.
“Student fees come in for the purpose of going back out to the students,” Thackston said. “That’s the primary role of Student Fed, to give the student fees back to the students.”
