The Student Activities Commission (SAC) created an emergency amendment on Thursday declaring themselves in a financial "Red Zone" and began implementing heavy new restrictions on student group funding proposals, effective immediately. Caps for guest speakers and cultural food tastings have been cut by 50 percent, and funding will no longer be awarded for off-campus events that are not "vital to the function of the group." All funding purely for entertainment purposes has been suspended.
It is an unprecedented and unfortunate situation that puts SAC in a tough position. With 16-20 new SAC groups joining in to share a $415,000 budget that increased very little from last year, they were on course to face obvious problems of supply and demand.
The Red Zone policies signify a new, extremely conservative stance on budgeting to address this critical situation. However, this emerging crisis could have been avoided. The SAC faced obvious problems that did not arrive overnight. This fiscal emergency resulted due to a lack of foresight.
We recognize and respect the fact that the SAC executive board is here to enforce policy and not make arbitrary decisions. However, not only did last year's SAC not have the prescience to ask for an increased budget to match its increased student groups, but this year's board continued funding student groups freely until last week. The SAC had to employ consistant funding policies, but policies should change to avert crisis, not to simply deal with crisis.
Although Student Council Treasurer and SAC Chairperson Ben Wardlow does not vote on proposals unless there is a tie, he knew the budget would be tight: "If it didn't happen in May, it would have happened in September. We realized money was tight and was going to go quickly." Other executive board members echoed his concern.
After $290,000 was allocated in April, the new board took power May 1 and allocated another $32,184 to student groups in May. They began this school year with only $47,678, and then granted $13,000 to groups like Gospel Choir, and $5,000 to the Hopkins Undergraduate Research Journal. Now, they are left with an operating budget of $25,376.17 for the rest of the school year.
Wardlow took care to revise last year's Red Book policy procedures and created a Blue Book policy for 2003-04 that he said "was even more fiscally conservative than the Red Book was."
It clearly wasn't conservative enough. With limited funding, SAC should have been more selective in budgeting. Had the SAC executive board paid attention and taken action in May, they would have avoided this emergency "Red Zone" amendment. We commend them for taking action, though it comes six months too late.
