Going into the year with a surplus of funds from years prior, the Student Government Association (SGA) at Trinity University continues to apportion funds to enhance campus life, focusing on transparency and inclusivity in this recent academic year.
Utilizing the funds from each student’s activity fee, SGA distributes these funds to students by supporting both University Sponsored Organizations (USOs) and Registered Student Organizations (RSOs). However, this year’s budget of $1,253,947.70 stemmed from both the annual student activity fee and an extra $556,347.01 from the years impacted by COVID-19, when many events were put on hold.
To properly distribute these funds, Conrad Jarvis, senior finance major and SGA’s head treasurer, works to divide up the budget. Jarvis, alongside Caterina Mora, senior business analytics and technology and international economics double-major and SGA vice president, as well as Avery Lim, senior business analytics and technology major and SGA assistant treasurer, oversee the rest of the finance committee. This group began the year understanding the parameters of their budget and setting out to accomplish various objectives.
“We have two general goals, it’s to spend the money on student organizations, [making] sure everybody gets a great experience, and try to let there be some carryover,” Jarvis said. “But that second goal is not a priority. From what I’ve seen, it’s our goal to maximize everybody’s experience on campus. … And if there’s carryover, great. If not, then we’re still happy that we provided money for student organizations to do things to grow.”
With these intentions in mind, SGA has been able to back large-scale initiatives that would have been difficult to support in the past. The two largest projects of fall 2023 were the Mental Wellness Initiative and SGA’s Project Helping Organizations Move and Excel (H.O.M.E), costing $100,000 and $61,600, respectively. While the initiative is still an ongoing process, Project H.O.M.E. has already directly impacted student organizations, granting 123 different clubs $200 each for activities.
These higher-cost events are just a part of SGA’s funding a plethora of endeavors. Last fall saw 73 funding requests made by 56 different RSOs, both increases from previous years. These requests resulted in a total of $256,752.89 being funded. Khushi Kakadia, sophomore biology major, worked as a part of SGA’s finance committee last fall and experienced the direct effects that the funds helped create in the Trinity community.
“The events that I have gone to that were funded by SGA were all of the SASA events,” Kakadia said. “Diwali, Mock Mehendi, that’s where I’ve seen the most impact. Going there and seeing so many people come out to celebrate so many different aspects of Hindu culture has been really cool.”
Alongside these goals for distributions of the funds, SGA also looked to improve the transparency of the entire funding process. By increasing the amount of marketing materials surrounding their funding meetings, the organization hoped it would allow for more accessibility for the Student Activity Fund. In the fall these changes were implemented, average funding requests for Senate meetings were 3.6 per meeting and 9.2 requests for finance committee funding meetings, once again increasing from prior semesters.
Despite their efforts, there remain essential components of the funding process that continue to confuse some student organizations as they aim to tap into the Student Activity Fund. SGA continues to work to simplify the process as much as they can, allowing student groups to fully utilize their resources at Trinity.
“One thing that we’re trying to do is to humanize the funding process in any way we can,” Mora said. “When [senators are] conducting a preliminary meeting, it is not about the senator interrogating the student or trying to question them. It’s more about trying to understand the proposal and why they need the funds, and if they need help or advice with anything, we’re there to help. We want to be someone that connects the student body with the administration with the funds that we have available. And we’re not anyone’s enemies, we are there to help.”