Starting this spring, Trinity, instead of the Student Activity Fee, will fund student wages for on-campus jobs at the William H. Bell Center. This will match the precedent the university follows by funding student wages in the library.
SAF, which SGA distributes yearly, has a dedicated $750,000 budget allocation for the next three years, and SGA President Joy Areola and Vice President Allison Waters have successfully worked to remove the student wages from this number. Waters, senior business and economics double-major, said that institutionalizing costs gives student organizations more opportunities.
“We have over 100 unique student orgs, and only about 70, 80 or 90 of them come to us for funding,” Waters said. “So if we could even see an increase in the amount of student organizations that come to SGA for funding in the future, I think this is really giving us a chance to have that happen.”
Areola and Waters had a year’s worth of conversations with the university administration to alter this aspect of SAF funding. In these conversations, Areola and Waters brought forth concerns, such as the decreasing carryover funds in SGA’s funding budget.
“Joy and I have been talking to VP Wells, who’s the vice president of Student Affairs, and VP Dietrich, who’s the vice president of Finance and Administration at Trinity, the entire year, about how we can preserve funding for students, specifically for student initiatives and activities, which is what the SAF should be used for,” Waters said. “We’re very, very lucky that they were able to do it this year at all, and that they were so willing to do so.”
Whether the current rates of student wages will change is uncertain.
“We hope that wages would be at least the same as what we previously funded them for, but I feel like it might give Kristen Harrison a bit more wiggle room. She doesn’t have to depend on a limited Student Activity Fee,” Areola said. “She can now request an increase in student wages, or a maintenance of student wages, in the same way that anybody else across the university would.”
Under the previous model, athletics had to request funding from SGA for student wages. Seth Asbury, associate director of athletics, wrote a statement on the athletic department’s thoughts surrounding this change.
“We’re grateful to the university for this procedure change. We continue to look forward to serving the 80% of campus that participate in our programs and facilities. We’re excited for SGA and the programming they’ll be able to fund with their new budget,” Asbury wrote in an email.
