Hamilton College currently hosts a wide variety of student clubs and organizations, most of whose funding is controlled by the elected representatives of the Student Government Alliance (SGA). Unfortunately, the annual budgetary process is rife with flaws and potential sources for favoritism, and the attitude which SGA holds towards this process betrays a deeper lack of care for the organizations for which they are responsible. However, I believe there are ways to improve this system to give clubs a better voice in the process.
Here is a summary of the current process: all recognized clubs at Hamilton College must, at the end of the spring semester, apply for a budget for the upcoming year in order to receive consistent funding. As a part of this process, club leaders submit a form describing their club’s budgetary needs, specifying what they want to use various parts of their proposed allocated budget on. This list does not need to be itemized; however, it is split into various categories, and a description of exactly what the funding is being used for is recommended. This form is sent to the Treasurer for review, who makes adjustments as they see fit before sending the adjusted amounts to SGA at large (officially the “Central Council”) to be voted on.
At the Central Council meeting, club budgets are voted on in batches of five clubs at a time, with some clubs removed from the initial vote and moved to the end to be discussed individually if needed. This process occurs in a single meeting. At this meeting, any members of the club who are present may speak for two minutes in defense of their club, otherwise, they may also submit an appeal or come in person to an appeals meeting which occurs the following week. Finally, any members of the Central Council who are members of the club being discussed or are otherwise biased are required to recuse themselves.
There are a variety of issues with this system, most of which are immediately apparent. By Article X, Section 3, Subsection B, paragraph (d) of the SGA bylaws, the Central Council Treasurer is solely responsible for the decisions made to cut budgets before they are presented to the Central Council for approval. Presumably, other people are involved in this process, such as Student Activities members and the other members of the Funding Committee, but by the current bylaws, the Treasurer is the only person specified.
The reasoning and process of these budget recommendations made by the Treasurer lacks transparency, as no minutes are sent out for any meetings which occur during this process, and clubs are only given a small blurb of justification for any changes made. In addition, time for clubs to react is short—for last April’s meeting, there were 8 hours and 15 minutes between the time the proposed budgets were made public and the meeting that voted on those proposals, giving clubs only a few hours to react and send in comments or find available members to advocate for them. This also all occurs during a single meeting, meaning it may be rather difficult for certain clubs, especially smaller clubs or those who do not necessarily have consistent membership, to be able to send representatives to this meeting.
Furthermore, appeals sent in to the initial meeting in lieu of a club member appearing in person seem to be ineffective. At last year’s meeting, one club tried to send in a comment as an appeal because none of their members were able to make it. This appeal was only read after the representatives had voted on their budget, making their appeal attempt worthless.
A second immediately-apparent issue is that the Central Council members are not required to read the proposals or have any 9knowledge about what the clubs are. For example, in last April’s meeting, someone questioned what the club “Untitled@Large” is. (As the current Vice President of Untitled@Large, this is especially relevant to me.) Director of Student Activities Ariel Adams responded that they were a student improv group—except that is not, in fact, what Untitled@Large is. Untitled@Large is a student theatre group, and unlike an improv group, we have to pay for the rights for our performances, which can sometimes be hundreds or thousands of dollars. If SGA is misinformed about our purpose, this could lead our funding to be irrationally cut, leaving our club unable to perform at all. This is a clear problem—why are SGA members not informed about the clubs for which they are responsible? Why is it acceptable for members to be voting on budgets for clubs that they have no knowledge of and misunderstand the purpose of?
From the meetings transcripts, it seems that the opinion of the Central Council is that the impetus is on the club themselves—if they want to be fairly represented, they have to be able to show up to a meeting with only eight hours of advance warning, or else show up to an appeals meeting after decisions have already been made and hope that they can change things. If the club does not have anyone available to advocate for them, they are consigned to the decisions of a council who knows little about how they work or what their budgets are actually used for.
A third and final issue that immediately comes to mind is the issue of club advocacy by Central Council members. While members are required to recuse themselves while voting, there is no need for recusal from discussion. All members of the Central Council are able to advocate for their clubs—this can be seen in the minutes of last April’s meeting, where a member of the Council was suspiciously knowledgeable about Rocketry Club’s budget, and was able to advocate for them without being noted as an official representative in the minutes. Notably, this discussion led to an increase in Rocketry Club’s budget. While the member who advocated for the club did recuse themselves from the vote, it is clear that a member of the Council influenced the Council’s decision on the budget for a club which they are involved in. Additionally, as mentioned above, who knows what occurs at the meetings to decide the budget recommendations—the Treasurer themselves must have club memberships they are not required to disclose or take into account under the current bylaws.
Of course, I do not mean to imply that corruption is occurring—rather, I am more concerned about unconscious bias towards certain clubs over others. A member of a certain club would almost certainly be more inclined to giving that club more money, or at least minimizing reduction to their budget. In addition, knowledge of what a club’s money is used for would make SGA less likely to cut it—if a member thinks that a certain thing their club does is essential, they might cut another club’s budget to favor their preferred club, thinking that the funding for the other club is less “essential” simply because they do not have an understanding of what the other club is using their funds for.
There is one aspect of this process that I have not yet addressed: the appeals meeting. This meeting occurs the week after the main budget meeting, and gives clubs a final opportunity to appeal to SGA to get their budget approved. While great in theory, this has a similar issue to the initial meeting—it may be difficult for clubs to pull together a representative who is available at that time right at the end of the semester, especially with finals approaching and, for students involved in the performing arts, end-of-semester performances. SGA’s opinion, as given in last April’s meeting, is that if representatives from organizations come back to defend their organization, it will show that they care and thus offer more credence to their request. That is, SGA’s opinion is that if you cannot find people to make it to a single specific meeting date during the end of the semester that we barely send out notice for, your club must not care about funding. This opinion also, again, clearly favors large clubs over smaller clubs, as smaller clubs will find it more difficult to find members who can attend the specific dates.
In addition, the minutes of the appeals meeting are not made public. Ignoring the fact that this violates Article X, Section 7, Subsection A of the SGA bylaws, this is another example of the lack of care that SGA shows towards the budgetary process. I understand that this meeting occurs directly before finals and many students start to leave campus around this time, but a meeting as important as this should either be thoroughly documented and released to the public or moved earlier in the semester so that there is time for details to be released.
As a final note, I would like to point out a comment from the minutes for the April 29 meeting of the Central Council. “It shouldn’t be the responsibility of SGA to attempt to understand what organizations are going to use their funding for.” While this is the opinion of one member of the Council, and not necessarily reflective of the opinion of the body as a whole, I find it odd that a member of an organization whose purpose is to make decisions about club budgets believes that it is not their responsibility to understand those budgets. If SGA does not understand what organizations are using their money for, why are they the ones who make these decisions? If you do not understand how the money is being used, why approve the use of the money in the first place?
Now, there are a few solutions that can be put into place to address the numerous issues in the entire budgetary process. Firstly, Central Council members should be better informed about the clubs that they are responsible for. A “quick fix” for this is easy: require SGA members to read over a description of all clubs before the meeting. Reading every single budget proposal might be too much for all members to do, but reading a summary will at least leave them more informed. This fix is far from perfect, however, as individual SGA members will still be uninformed on each club’s exact budgetary needs.
I thus propose an overhaul of the system: instead of a single meeting which club representatives must attend if they want to be represented, the entire process should be extended. Instead of a single meeting, SGA ought to reserve a weekend for all clubs to give a short presentation on their budget request for the entire central council. The Central Council members can then ask questions of the club representative to ensure a thorough understanding of the needs of the club. This process can still be optional—perhaps SGA could send out a sign-up form for the clubs who wish to present, so that the Council knows how many to expect and schedule around that.
This system, or at least a similar one, gives every club a fairer chance to advocate for themselves, and neatly solves the issue of SGA members being uninformed of a club’s purpose or needs. Bias is still possible, as the treasurer and other Central Council members will still have club affiliations that will affect their decisions, but this would reduce some of the more glaring flaws. In addition, this reduces the need for an appeals meeting, as all clubs would have already explained their exact reasoning to SGA at large, and an appeals meeting would mostly retread the same ground.
Overall, I do believe that the current system is an improvement on the old system, where there were no consistent budgets and everything was handled via contingency requests. However, numerous problems clearly exist, and addressing these problems would help ensure a fairer system of funding for all clubs on campus.