As incoming president of the Tufts Debate Society, I recently had the displeasure of going through the budgetary approval process for the 2025–26 academic year. To say that this process was predatory and untransparent is an understatement. I strongly encourage there to be a reevaluation of the way this process operates.
To begin this process, the leaders of the Tufts Debate Society and I gathered to create a budget proposal for the 2025–26 year. We conducted a thorough review of how we allocated and spent our funding and found that at the time of submitting our proposal, we were projected to spend more than 95% of our total budget this year. Taking into account that our organization has been growing in size recently and that current inflation is at 2.4%, we decided that it would be fair to request a 2% budget increase and submitted this proposal to the Treasury for approval.
The next step was to meet with a Tufts Community Union Treasury officer to discuss our proposed budget. From my recollection, the first thing the treasury officer said to us was that our proposal was “inequitable” and would not be approved. The officer did not expand on what aspects they felt were inequitable or any other qualms they had about our budget. They then claimed that we had the same students competing at tournaments every weekend and that we should consider addressing this. This is completely untrue and goes to show how little the officer knew about the operations of our club. When asked if they were suggesting we impose a limit on how many tournaments each member can participate in, they immediately got defensive and claimed that they were unable to tell us how to run our club. We then explained that since inflation is at 2.4% and we were asking for a 2% budget increase, our proposal would essentially be a budget cut for our organization. To this, as I recall, the officer simply replied that this proposed budget was inequitable, once more, without further explanation. We then finally came to an agreement that we would keep our budget the same as the previous year, which would completely impede our operations but seemed to no longer make our budget “inequitable” according to the officer. Although frustrated with this meeting, we were able to regroup and find ways to tighten our belts internally to make this inexplicable setback work.
We thought that this would be the end of our budget planning until we were sent an email stating, “unfortunately, your proposed budget was not approved as is. [The Allocations Board] expressed concern about the number of competitions your club was attending and decided to cut the costs of two competitions from your budget. For some more context, there was a discussion about the need for weekly/bi-weekly off-campus travel, as this felt excessive for a group with lesser membership.”
After reading this email, I was utterly confused about a myriad of things. First of all, why was our budget cut? The email provides no reasoning as to how they determined we do not need weekly/bi-weekly off-campus travel nor why we are considered a club with lesser membership. It is also untrue that our budget incurs “weekly/bi-weekly off-campus travel” costs, as we predominantly compete in the Boston area and only require travel expenses every six weeks or so. The second point of confusion was why we were given the impression that the compromise we reached in the meeting was final. Thirdly, we were confused why this decision was made with zero input from any member of the Tufts Debate Society. I think that it is completely inequitable for the Treasury to make such an important decision about our club funding — the money we need in order to fulfill our objectives — without us being present. These treasurers do not understand how our organization is run, how we manage our funding or if we can even continue to operate with such a cut. Finally, the most confusing part is how Tufts continues to expand the student body and raise the price of tuition, yet they continue to cut funding to organizations such as Tufts Debate Society that foster intellectual enrichment and discussion about important issues plaguing this world.
Looking back at this process, I have nothing but frustration toward the treasurers who felt comfortable cutting the budget of our club without any insight into how the organization is run. Given this, I fear for our recruitment and retention of club members next year since we are now going to have to restrict the tournament participation of our members. Furthermore, if it is true that multiple clubs experienced budget cuts, as I was told by a treasury officer, I am confident these fears and frustrations are present amongst all of them.
Thus, the unfairness of the budgetary process merits a revaluation by Tufts. If treasurers are allowed to make claims of “inequality” without reasoning, cut budgets with no insight into an organization and strongly impede their performance, it is evident that this system is unjust.
