By Victor Dixon, Editor-in-Chief
The Student Government Association’s budget will likely be negative by June after a variety of accounting errors lead the body to spend money it didn’t actually have. As a result, SGA has been watching its pennies and funding fewer bills as the semester has progressed.
But SGA’s treasurer and adviser both say that the body — which is allocated between $60,000 and $70,000 each year to spend as it sees fit — has instituted new policies that will keep problems from happening again.
The shortage, said SGA treasurer and SGA president-elect Nathan Galicia, was caused by a number of factors.
One of them was that invoices for one of SGA’s larger recurring bills, which is for the UWill online therapy program that is available for all undergraduate students, went unnoticed and unpaid for the first few months of the semester.
The service, which SGA pays for, is billed on a monthly basis. But invoices this semester were being sent to an inactive email that no one had access to.
SGA now must come up with the money to pay for those missed months. The service costs about $3,157 a month.
Galicia said that SGA and its adviser, Dr. Andi Giesen, are working to prevent this issue from arising again by negotiating a new contract with UWill so that it is easier to keep track of the expense.
“Right now, Dr G is working on a new contract with UWill. And so instead of a monthly bill, it'll be a yearly thing,” Galicia said.
Another issue arose this semester when SGA found discrepancies between its budget reports and those kept by the business office. The difference was about $5,000, and SGA eventually discovered that it had failed to account for the money that was allocated for scholarships provided to SGA’s senators and executives each semester.
Plus, said Giesen, SGA is being pulled in different directions more often now. Budgeting has become a new challenge in recent years because of increased student participation.
“Prior to COVID and all that, SGA didn’t spend the money that they're able to spend now with the events and things like that. People weren't getting together for events and food and networking and collaboration,” Giesen said. “We have more foot traffic. We have more students participating in things. We have more students attending things that we are hosting. So even if our enrollment stays the same, or drops a little bit, our foot traffic is increasing.”
Now that SGA has mostly resolved its budget discrepancies, it has a more accurate grasp of what money it actually has and it is working with other solutions to ensure it will not encounter any unexpected problems after the semester is over.
These solutions mainly entail having more meetings to confirm the accuracy of the budget and making sure that all senators are well informed about its status.
SGA is now also reviewing bills with more scrutiny and wants to ensure that its remaining funds are being used to support the interests of the student body.
“The main idea is that it's going to serve the entirety of the student body or it's something that anyone can really benefit from on campus, not just one specific group,” Galicia said.
Galicia and Giesen said that the Student Life department will be able to provide contingency funds so that SGA can start next year off even.
PHOTO: Courtesy Unsplash
