The final stages of budgeting are drawing nearer, and soon it will be time to determine your student activity fee. I would like to use this article to recap the budgeting philosophy that is held by the current Executive Board.
To begin, I’d like to thank my E-Board for being so dedicated these past few weekends. It is not easy to donate three weekends to early mornings and late afternoons of budgeting in the Student Union. The Union staff has also been a great help and served as a necessary component of our process. I have very much enjoyed working with this group over the past month to provide the funding that best reflects each club’s purpose.
When budgeting, the E-Board divides into three groups, each run by a Student Activities Resource Person. The SARP is a member of the Union staff who oversees the clubs year after year. Within these smaller groups, we decide on how much each item within a club’s budget should be approved for. We may grant a club most of what they requested, or we may choose to deny a club some specific items. These decisions are not random. Instead, they are carefully developed through budgeting policies and knowing what is most important for the well-being of a club.
Our philosophy for funding larger expenses is on a case per case basis, and depends on what purpose they would serve. For example, a newly formed club this year is RPI TV. This club has the potential to become a huge service to the entire student body. The campus cable network currently does not broadcast any student run activities or club events. RPI TV came before the E-Board during the fall semester to form this club with the hope of taping all events occurring on campus and broadcasting them over the campus’ closed network. We have The Polytechnic, which is our written media publication, and we have WRPI, which is our radio station. It seemed like a perfect idea to create a television station dedicated to RPI news, focusing on student life.
Therefore, the E-Board approved this club as a Union-recognized club, and they were granted the privilege of becoming a Union-funded club. Under next year’s budget, we have provided them with the necessary start-up equipment that they need to function in order to serve their club purpose. They have been working very closely with Media Operations to gain expertise and also the use of their equipment for the short-term. The E-Board felt that by subsidizing a club such as RPI TV, that we were supporting a huge array of students on campus rather than just a few. Therefore, we were confident that we were representing and benefiting the biggest group of students in the use of these activity fee dollars.
Overall, I wanted to give you a review as to how budgets are allocated, although that is just a small piece of the process. I welcome you to e-mail me or stop by my office for any additional questions. This week’s business meeting will be Thursday at 6 pm in the Patroon Room.
