The quality of student life at Wesleyan this year has been excellent by anyone’s standards; the high caliber of events this year gives us all reason to be satisfied. As always, the SBC is humbled to be tasked with directing your money towards the most enriching and widely beneficial student group activities as humanly possible. We are constantly in awe of your passion and creativity and wish to thank the countless unsung student heroes for all their invaluable contributions to the Wesleyan community. We all owe them our gratitude.
That said, it is with regret that we must inform you that our budget has begun to run dry. We attribute this to three things:
1) record oil prices and inflation have increased the cost of virtually everything – many consumer goods have yet to readjust from summertime highs;
2) a dramatically increased, and unfortunately misinformed, belief that the SBC is now operating with much more money than it used to; and
3) an abnormally high occurrence of exceptional requests, many of which were front loaded at the beginning of last semester.
Thus far, the Wesleyan student body has been incredibly fortunate; our way of life has not been noticeably affected despite U.S. equity markets having lost over half of their value since the beginning of the crash. In stark contrast: our endowment has experienced massive losses, faculty and staff salaries have been frozen; important programs and department funding are being extensively cut; and all new construction, even basic maintenance in some cases, has been halted. Sacrifice was inevitable. Despite all of this, student group requests continue to be (on average) 200 percent higher than they were by this point last year. We recognize and apologize for our role in this unsustainable spending pattern.
To be precise, the SBC currently has $60,000 available for allocation with nine meetings remaining. To put these figures in perspective, until now the weekly allocation total has been in the range of $15,000 to $25,000. It is very clear then that frugality must be the name of the game in the weeks to come. For the sake of your fellow students, we implore all those considering requests to please be mindful of these circumstances and understand that we are working with very scarce resources.
Not to worry, we have already funded the staples of campus life that we have all come to enjoy such as: the Argus ($43,000), the Film Series ($44,000), Senior Cocktails ($82,000), Cultural Identity Months ($39,000), and WESU ($49,000). Again, one of the primary reasons for this budget shortfall stems from the plethora of excellent events we have already funded. On a positive note, there are many events yet to come that have already been paid for. We hope that you have appreciated and continue to enjoy the events that your tuition dollars pay for, and that you are looking forward to those yet to come–such as a very memorable Spring Fling.
Yours,
The Student Budget Committee
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