As I looked over WSA midyear reports last week in preparation to write the standard Student Budget Committee allocations story, I noticed something odd: the SBC seemed to have $356,000 left for the second semester of this year, an unprecedented amount in comparison to past the two years. After interviewing Gianna Palmer ’10, Nicole Ippoliti ’09 and Matt Ball ’08“the SBC chairs from the last three school years”the fact remained unchanged: the SBC has a lot of money on its hands this semester thanks to the recently enforced hike in the student activities fee that has brought $150,000 extra to their budget.

After further reviewing the documents, nothing seemed to prove that the SBC was or is hoarding money. I sought documents to compare their approval of 80 percent of funds requested this year to previous year’s rates, but unfortunately, these numbers either do not exist or were not made available. Their position“that there have been an unusually low number of requests in the first semester”seemed to hold up in light of the total amount requested: about $320,000 (a number that was initially included in and unfortunately edited out of the story). If the SBC had allocated 100 percent of the money requested as opposed to what they actually allocated (80 percent), they still would be left with $293,000 to allocate this semester, a similarly unprecedented amount.

In today’s Argus, Charlie Kurose ’10, who seems like a nice guy, writes a Wespeak (which I had the unfair advantage of reading before this issue went to print) criticizing the story. I sympathize with some of his argument. He takes issue with the word “only” in this sentence: “Last semester, student groups received only 80 percent of the funding that they asked for, and with the surplus of money, some student groups are questioning why their budgets were cut.” The word “only” was added without my knowledge in the late night editorial process, and I regret that. I have no idea whether 80 percent is a low or high number since I do not have evidence from previous years, and I understand that many of the requests to the SBC are illegitimate or written expecting less than requested.

My regret, however, ends there. In my time on The Argus, I have found SBC members to be hypersensitive to most criticism levied against them. As a freshman, I sent a simple list of questions to the SBC chair at the time about the year’s allocations and received an angry e-mail from then-WSA president Zach Kolodin ’07 chastising me for asking overcritical questions laced with implications about previous SBC-Argus battles over funding. As a freshman, I had no idea that there was even such a controversy to keep in mind when asking questions, and I was taken aback. Kurose’s other criticism is, unfortunately, in this same vein. When I constructed the table outlining funds received and allocated, I specifically tried to emphasize the variety of allocations. Some groups received drastically less funds (Chinese House, Argus, WesU), some requested drastically less (Underdog Musical Collective), some received more (Psi U, Mock Trial), and some received the same (Second Stage). Busy trying to simply obtain the documents with these numbers on them, I did not have the time nor the wherewithal to investigate the circumstances behind each allocation. I am on a college newspaper here, and five days (not one) is more than enough time to spend on one story, especially since I also am busy assigning and editing stories twice a week.

Your jobs, too, are busy and complicated. But understand that you are in public, easily-criticized positions. We are too. If you think I enjoy watching people rip up copies of The Argus in Pi, then you are wrong. Learn to deal with it.

The real issue here is whether the student activities fee has been raised too high and that“as a result”there will be large surpluses at the expense of the student body every year. With Senior Cocktails and Spring Fling out of the way, they began the semester with $246,000 to spend, a fact that Kurose does not refute. Where will that go? There is still identity month funding, but that will be ultimately around $15,000 dollars, a pittance compared to the larger sum remaining. Perhaps there will also be some debts from previous years as well as some extra requests from better-funded groups such as WESU. But, in the long run, there seems to be a likely chance that there will be a surplus. Not the end of the world, but certainly something to be made public. That’s why I wrote the story.