As the student activity fee surplus from the COVID-19 pandemic begins to run out, clubs at Tufts are turning to other sources of funding beyond the Tufts Community Union Senate to fill gaps in their budgets.
“The surplus has … increased what the student activities fee goal has been,” TCU Treasurer Brendan French, a junior, said. “Now that it’s been mostly used up, the student activities fee that we work with year to year is going to be lower.”
The student activity fee, which is currently $396 per student, is determined by the Board of Trustees. French said he believes the amount has not changed since before the pandemic.
“That number has been the same since … before [COVID-19],” French said. “If we look back 10 years, the student body was different. Maybe we had [fewer] students [and] clubs, [so] things were probably not as expensive.”
To request funding from the Senate, clubs first meet with the Allocations Board on Wednesday, where they will either receive their requested amount or be instructed to wait for the Senate body, who votes on the requests during their Sunday meeting.
“Everyone in [the Allocations Board] will ask the club questions about how they plan for the event, where they got the cost from, did they do cost comparison,” French said.
If clubs are unsatisfied with the board’s recommendation, they can appeal to the Senate and present their case during the Sunday meeting.
“I try and tell them what [the Allocations Board] was thinking, all [their] viewpoints, … so they fully understand what to expect when they come into the room with Senate so they’re not caught off guard,” French said.
Harshit Pal, a junior and captain of Tufts Bhangra, expressed his frustrations with the Allocation Board’s allotment of its budget.
“In our budget, there were three competitions bookmarked for us to go to … so we asked at first for the two competitions … [but] we get approved for the one that was cheaper, and then we get denied for the second one,” he said.
Pal said the team felt the decision was inconsistent with funding given to other competitive groups.
“But there are … a few competitive teams that were granted three places to go to, and they were given full money to go to those places,” Pal said. “We didn’t think that was all the most fair.”
The team had to turn to other sources of funding for their third competition in Maryland, including the President’s Office and reallocating money in their existing budget.
“[The President’s Office was] able to cover our cost of transportation, almost fully,” Pal said. “We reallocated everything that we were going to put to other things. … Those other things were important. It’s not like they weren’t important.”
Despite this, Pal acknowledged that the Senate faces challenges in distributing limited funds across a growing number of student groups.
“I think this is just Tufts’ problem, that they need to give more money, or more money needs to be allocated [to clubs] within the percentage of our tuition,” Pal said.
Junior Joshua Harrison, outgoing treasurer and incoming president of the Tufts chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, believes that the appealing process is straightforward but the decision-making process is not.
The Tufts NSBE tried to redeem a bookmark to attend their annual national conference in Baltimore, Md. with more than 15 members of their club.
“I think the process as a whole was clear and easy to navigate. I think some of the decision-making was significantly less transparent, and some of the reasoning behind their decisions was not made known to us,” Harrison said. “We were aware that there was a chance they would give us less funding or decide to give us no funding [when we appealed].”
He expressed frustration with the lack of initial clarity from the Allocations Board and lack of preparation from the Senate.
“In their reasoning for why they’d give us seven [spots] and not 15, they said they took the hard cap of 15 and subtracted the eight people who had prior gone from the limit,” Harrison said. “But during the [Allocations Board] meeting with them, they did not raise any concerns regarding returning members going, so we were a bit blindsided by this being their reasoning for not giving us the money.”
Like Bhangra, NSBE also sought additional funding from other sources, including the Africana Center and the Center for STEM Diversity.
“In the fall … we got money from the School of Engineering Dean’s fund, the Africana Center and the Center for STEM Diversity,” Harrison said. “It would have been nice to have our remaining funds be going towards another conference in the future instead of having to supplement the current conference.”
“I think the TCU Treasury, specifically, was incredibly helpful through this process,” Harrison said. “When we were given the less than satisfactory verdict, I was able to go into Brendan’s office hours and chat with him about it, work through our appeal, drafting our appeal and the reasoning behind the decision.”
However, he said he was frustrated by having to repeat information during the appeals process, despite submitting materials beforehand.
“I spent a decent amount of time writing up materials for [the Senate] to reference before our hearing, and when I got to the hearing, they had not read any of my materials,” Harrison said. “In the meeting … it was just rehashing points I’d already submitted to them. So that was a bit frustrating.”
