Steve Brady announced student club budget request process for 2015 fiscal year
By: CASSIE KIBENS
Production Manager
At the March 25 Student Governance Council (SGC) meeting, Steve Brady, STLCC-Meramec student activities manager, announced changes to the student activities budget for the 2014-2015 academic year. By April 8, student clubs are required to submit a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins on July 1.
The change to the process comes from Kent Kay, district vice chancellor of finance. According to Brady, The Vice Chancellor for Finance interpreted the policy to mean that all the money in the student activities budget goes primarily to clubs versus department and campus committee events.
“We had to submit a budget, which was finalized on Monday [March 24] morning, and it complied,” Brady said. “Since all the money on the student activities budget now goes to clubs, from Monday morning on, we’ve been working to get the word out and to meet with people, to make sure they understand the process, understand the ramifications of it and understand how they can benefit.”
Students will have to now envision what their possible budget will look like for the upcoming fiscal year and submit for review by the Student Activities Budget Committee. In previous years, clubs would participate in a “lottery of events” to earn money through various campus activities. The money then would be used to fund club events.
“Now I think clubs have more power; the SGC has more power,” Oscar Zamora, SGC president, said. “Now clubs, instead of waiting to get chosen at the lottery of events, clubs can submit an unlimited number of requests.”
At the March 28 SGC meeting, the SGC became a club to comply with the new procedures. The SGC will also become the repository of the current money in club accounts that is not allocated by April 8.
“It makes it a little bit more difficult for current club officers and members to future cast what can happen in the next calendar/fiscal year,” Joshua Gage, vice president of the Veterans Club, said. “It’s going to be a huge hurdle, but the two-week time frame to re-do constitutions and reorganize your entire methods of how everything’s been going on is going to be a challenge itself, but it should be overcome pretty easily.”
According to Brady, he and the executive council of the SGC have been working on a plan to ask for extra funds that can be allocated throughout the upcoming fiscal year. These funds would be for extra activities clubs do not have the money for but want to sponsor the event.
“Inspiration could strike in November for somebody for an absolutely incredible event and you’d love to be able to fund it, but if you don’t have a funding source that would be a shame,” Brady said.
With the new budget process, department and campus committee events are also effected. Their budgets will be re-allocated to the student clubs. According to Brady, an option for the department committees is to pair with a club to sponsor the event.
“The challenge will be, clubs are students and committees are faculty and staff,” Denise Sperruzza, associate professor and head of the Diversity Committee, said. “This is like our administrative-type duties and these are some of the things we do that we have to do because you’re an employee here. Those are two very different things so that will be challenge.”
Sperruzza said she is sad that funding will be cut for committees, but sees a few advantages to working with clubs as well.
“An advantage I see is that it might help student involvement, because that’s one of the biggest challenges, any event on campus, to get students to show up,” Sperruzza said. “So that might be an advantage that could come out of it.”
With the one-week time crunch Gage said he anticipates some frustration to re-do the constitutions and create a new budget, but believes the new budget will balance out the clubs as well.
“It’s focusing more on the members of the club to make the club survive which is teaching club members and the clubs themselves how to be more independent with a St. Louis Community College as a parent helping their child,” Gage said. ”They’re there for the guidance and instruction, but it’s a learning block for the clubs themselves.”
