Once again, the SBC will funnel as much as $40,000 into the endowment at the end of this year, in their haste to utilize this large surplus in the budget of the student activities fund. Although this is a worthy use of the money, it is certainly not how student funds were intended to be allocated.
Ever since the SBC increased the student activities fund three years ago, the group has ended up with a large surplus each year. The increase, however, has not translated into an effective distribution of funding to the more than 200 student clubs and organizations on campus. The reason such a surplus exists in the first place is because the SBC takes back unused funds from all student groups at the end of the year: by then, there is not enough time to redistribute all of the extra funds among these groups.
Thus, we have two major issues with the way in which the SBC has handled the student activities fund in recent years: they have not effectively planned ahead in order to deal with such a large surplus, and, once they have this large surplus, they are not using it a way that directly enhances student life.
To solve the first problem, student groups should return to the SBC the funds that they do not use, either at the end of the first semester or after the culmination of whatever activity they requested funds for. If groups are opposed to this idea, then the SBC should take back extra funds throughout the year, so that they have more time to better utilize a potential surplus.
However, we realize that there will always be some surplus even if such systems were put in place. Therefore, the SBC should find other ways to use extra money collected from groups. Since this is a student fund, the money should go towards student-centered events, such as Spring Fling. And no matter how they decide to deal with the SBC surplus, student groups should be more responsible by working with the SBC to make sure these funds don’t go to waste.
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