StuCo Bounces Back From Debt Troubles
On Friday, Sept. 12, the Student Council (StuCo) Executive Board and advisers convened to discuss the plans for the upcoming year. During the conversation, the Council discovered that they had fallen into a debt of approximately 800 dollars last year and would be forced to deduct this amount from this year’s StuCo stipend.
This sudden news initially shocked StuCo members because in years past, the club had always ended the years with surpluses. As they began to plan for the next year, however, their worries lessened. StuCo secretary and upper Joel Lotzkar ensured that one of the club’s main goals this year is to make sure such an occurrence does not happen again.
“We certainly did not expect to be informed that there was a deficit last year,” Lotzkar said. “We will make sure that this mistake will not happen this year.”
“The spending did not put us wildly over budget and in all honesty will probably be of no noticeable effect to the rest of this year’s spending.”
According to health instructor and StuCo adviser Carol Cahalane, a culmination of several circumstances, including higher expenses in the year’s expenditures and a small portion of careless calculations, resulted in the deficit. Some of the more costly expenditures included allocations to student clubs, the pep rally food stands and the goodbye t-shirts for former principal Tom Hassan’s flash mob send-off.
Furthermore, StuCo experienced a series of miscommunications with club funding requests. As a lending source, StuCo has often found itself in a position of allocating club funding, only for clubs to fail to turn in receipts or spend the money. Thus, as StuCo president and senior Rebecca Ju explained it, such a situation caused a lot of uncertainty about whether those funds were actually used and should be deducted from the budget. Several times, StuCo did not record those tenuous fund appropriations in their budget. Unfortunately, last year in particular, according to Ju, a number of clubs came to collect those funds at the last minute, surprising and overwhelming the budget.
In order to avoid a deficit this year, StuCo aims to eradicate what Cahalane termed a “casual approach to financial management.” Cahalane said that foremost StuCo must adopt a prudent financial management plan.
“I think that the students need to be very careful about knowing exactly to the penny where they place the money in,” she said. “So, when [the advisers] receive general statements such as ‘everything is fine’ and ‘we have plenty of money’ we should and will respond with questions such as ‘what does ‘plenty of money’ mean?’”
Recalling the funding uncertainties of last year, Cahalane also emphasized that this year StuCo must play it safe, counting tenuous fundings as definite fundings, even if that means fewer allocations.
“StuCo now knows that even if the receipts aren’t turned in, they can consider the money used. And if it’s not gone at the end of the year, then it rolls over to the following year’s budget,” Cahalane said.
Ju agreed with Cahalane and said that the club should keep more frequent and accurate records of the budget that explicitly show how much money has been taken out from the account and how much is remaining. The StuCo Executive Board and Budget Committee are currently reconstructing the budget. They hope to set definite amounts in the budget for club funding and recreational events before committing money to different clubs. With last year’s deficit in mind, according to Ju, StuCo may be more conservative this year in approving funding requests.
“For the past few days, a couple club heads have come up to us and asked for funding, and we had to respond that this term StuCo might not be able to be as generous as usual just because we want to make sure we set a precedent that we manage our budget well.”
For the most part, however, StuCo Budget Committee head and upper Charlotte Sununu defused worries over the budget dilemma and has emphasized that the budget deficit itself was small compared to the overall budget of StuCo.
“The spending did not put us wildly over budget and in all honesty will probably be of no noticeable effect to the rest of this year’s spending,” Sununu said.
StuCo Budget Committee head and senior Cam Rider has even said that despite the budget deduction, StuCo will not have to be more conservative with its money.
“Clubs will still be able to come to us and get funding for parties and events: possibly even multiple times a year,” Rider said.
Currently, StuCo is striving to create an organized budget system that will both safeguard against another deficit and support a number of fun student activities. Despite the small setback, StuCo intends to start the year off on the right foot, and Exonians can look forward to continued StuCo funding support and weekend activities.
“Charlotte and I are already really on top of the budget this year, and I think everything will work out even better than previous years,” Rider said. “We’re really looking forward to seeing people participate in events and become interested in new clubs, thanks to the management that we’re able to do.”
Ju confirmed Rider’s statement, stating that she is confident that StuCo will have no problem working back from this small dilemma.
“I don’t want people to get the impression that StuCo is starting off on the wrong foot. It’s a completely understandable thing [to be in debt],” she said. “All we have to do is be a little bit more vigilant, and with our plans for the year, this is totally doable.”