By Halcyon Orvendal
On Wednesday, Feb. 26, the Associated Student Body (ASB) Finance Committee (FIN) sent an email to all student organizations, excluding Student Media Board groups, announcing large changes to the existing rules for financial allocations. The email, sent two days before the original deadline for budget requests, communicated that student organizations would have an additional week to make all the necessary changes. During the allocations process, student organizations are required to list out their expected operating costs for the next academic year and present the information to FIN for a budget request.
Finn Watson ’26, ASB treasurer, elaborated in an interview with the Mossy Log on the logistics of the allocations process. According to Watson, each club creates an ideal request — the amount they want to have — and a minimum request, which Watson described as the bare minimum for the club to function. Using these request levels from each club, FIN decides how to best distribute out the money to each club, trying to meet each club’s needs. 86 clubs sent in allocation applications this year, which were reviewed by FIN’s twelve members.
The applications go through several rounds of review. The first round is a holistic review of each club’s request and budgetary plan, and the following four to seven rounds are used to ensure that the amount of money allocated does not exceed the amount that FIN has available. The new provisions were made in response to lower incoming freshman enrollment than previous years and in anticipation of the notably large senior class graduating this year. The student population each year determines the pool of money FIN has to allocate, as it comes from the mandatory $360 Associated Student Body Fee (colloquially, the Student Fee) that every full-time, undergraduate student pays as a part of their yearly tuition.
The allocations for this academic year that clubs are currently operating on comes from a pool of $548,478 that FIN distributed between student organizations last spring. The total club budget for next academic year is approximately $495,220, a $53,257 deficit, which means that several clubs will need to adopt cost-cutting measures.
FIN’s updated policies attempt to address the shortfall by limiting the amount of money allocated for specific budgetary items. Some of the changes to the allocations included a $12 maximum price-per-head cap for food served at events, as well as limiting food events to three per semester. There were options for a $20 price-per-head maximum for affinity groups, given sufficient justification to FIN.
Watson clarified that these new standards are not intended to police each club’s use of allocated funds, but rather ensure equitable distribution of funds across student organizations.
“We just need guardrails in place. And so these are not meant to be punitive or enforced in spending, they’re just meant to be guardrails for how much people can ask for, so that we’re not way overfunding one club and then leaving someone else out to dry,” Watson said.
The email from FIN announcing the change was sent out just two days before budget applications were originally due on Feb. 28. Student organizations were given only one week of additional time to make their budgets compliant by March 7. The new rules also required clubs to create a detailed shopping list for next year’s events, including the price per item.
The Asian Student Union (ASU) quickly expressed their concerns with the new regulations. Affinity groups often host events that give students access to food from their culture that are not available elsewhere on campus.
“We were concerned that these new guidelines would disproportionately hurt affinity groups and culture-based clubs,” the ASU wrote in a statement to The Mossy Log.
The ASU, alongside the signatures of many other student organizations, such as Japan Club, Black Student Union, Gente Latina Unida, and German Club, sent a letter to FIN and the Office of Student Engagement outlining their concerns with the new rules, along with other club-specific concerns. They had particular concerns with the level of detail required by creating individual shopping lists for events a year in advance. Many of ASU’s concerns were alleviated after meetings with Watson and ASB Director of Allocations Aadya Dixit.
Dixit, in an interview with The Mossy Log, described the situation.
“We have been in communications, we have assured them that this is more for our calculations of resource allocations as compared to strict adherence of how we expect clubs to implement their spendings,” Dixit said.
After meeting with Watson, the ASU relayed to The Mossy Log that the guidelines “did not bind next year’s leadership to events decided on this year.” Many of the rules are less strict than they appear on the surface — it was made clear that the itemized list, which was a key complaint for ASU, “did not need to be as detailed as the guidelines made it seem.”
Watson hopes that this will be an easy change which helps alleviate some of the funding issues arising.
“My big hope is that these are a one to two-year speed bump. These are not meant to be permanent. My end goal is to raise the student fee or get more money for us somehow, so that we don’t struggle like this again, because (the) student fee hasn’t been raised since 2011 and so we’re allocating 2011 money in 2025. If we raise (the) student fee to meet inflation, then we won’t need these anymore, which would be great,” Watson said.
About the Author
