Trinity is getting rid of the student activity fee and incorporating it into tuition. SGA predicts their future budgets for allocation to have zero carryover unlike years past, as the funding allocated to SGA will become consistently $750,000 yearly for the foreseeable future.
SGA has been preparing USOs with monthly meetings on the possibility of budget cuts. At the same time, SGA President Joy Areola and Vice President Allison Waters have been working with university administration to create a new system of fund distribution.
Jessica Edonick, Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, is an SGA faculty advisor and has met with Areola and Waters weekly to bring about the changes in SGA funding. She discussed the motivations behind the replacement of the SAF.
“There will no longer be a student activity fee. It’s going to be a part of tuition … It’s more about being transparent about the cost of students’ education and putting it into the tuition is being very clear,” Edonick said. “[The SAF is] going to be rolled into tuition and [the amount allocated to SGA] is a fixed rate. It’s not variable based on enrollment.”
Edonick noted that giving SGA a fixed amount to work with yearly provides stability. In past years, the SAF has depended on the number of students enrolled at a given time, as each student paid a fixed amount.
With the new plan, SGA allocation will no longer fluctuate depending on the number of students.
For the next academic year, $750,000 will be allocated to SGA’s distribution from tuition. According to Edonick, this is slightly more than SGA would have otherwise gotten based on enrollment. The SGA President and Vice President will meet with Trinity’s Business team to review the funding amount on a cyclical basis.
SGA believes that the new plan will allow for more consistency in budgeting. However, they will still need to plan around the reduction of funds from the past few years. Areola stated that she is working with USOs to support them while also helping them find other funding sources to make up the difference.
“We’ve already been working to be a little more consistent with how we are funding and making sure we are funding the essential, but we are really encouraging students and groups to do fundraising or look at the funds they already have in their accounts for putting on events,” Areola said.
Even though funds from other sources such as fundraising could provide cushioning, SGA remains the primary source of funding for organizations. Waters asserted that SGA is managing to fund organizations on the same level, despite the changes.
“To clarify, we are not funding people less,” Waters said. “Even though we’ve had less money to work with and we are going to continue to have less money to work with, this year we’ve managed to fund almost the exact same percentage of requests that we’ve funded in years past.”
USOs will present their funding proposals in the spring, and RSOs won’t begin funding meetings until next fall. With this in mind, SGA has specifically been working with USOs to make adjustments.
“The reason that we are talking to [USOs] is because currently, USOs get about 80% of the budget as a whole and the last 20% goes to everyone else for the rest of the year,” Waters said. “We want to reallocate that amount, that percentage, and try and make it more equitable for everyone else on campus.”
USO leaders attending these meetings have expressed mixed emotions on the subject. Sydney Mayhew, senior psychology major and executive coordinator of Trinity University Volunteer Action Community, has been attending the USO meetings. She found the USO meetings helpful in preparing her organization for their budget changes.
“I know it can be hard for some people to think about cutting budgets, which I totally understand, but I feel really good about it. I think moving funds around to make sure other student orgs have funding is always something that I am going to be supportive of,” Mayhew said.
While Mayhew has found the process to be a positive experience, other USOs have had more difficulty in making changes to their budgets. Alex McCaffity, senior political science, human communication and Spanish triple-major and co-director of Trinity University Student Ambassadors, attended the December USO meeting. She said she felt frustrated at SGA’s noncommittal approach to the amount of budget reductions.
“They broke things to us in this meeting at the end of last semester where they told us we were gonna have to cut at least 20% of our budgets, which is not what the advisors were told,” McCaffity said. “Somebody asked the question of ‘If we can get it down to 20% of the budget, do you promise not to cut anymore when we go in to ask for the funds’ and SGA said ‘No, we can’t promise that we aren’t going to cut it anymore.’”
Furthermore, McCaffity emphasized that SGA is focusing on USO budget reduction over RSO financial cuts. She felt that there is a lack of transparency.
“They told us, ‘If y’all don’t cut, the clubs on campus are gonna have to suffer, and that’s way more people,’ which I don’t think is fair. And they aren’t telling the clubs this because they are like ‘We don’t want there to be fighting amongst the student body,’” McCaffity said. “I think it is a total disaster and mess. I feel like there is zero accountability from SGA about the situation. I also feel like there is a complete lack of transparency.”
