Oswego State Student Association heard club budget appeals on Tuesday, April 30, after SA revamped how it allocates club funding for the 2019-2020 academic year to correct the $200,000 budget deficit.

One of the responsibilities of SA is to allocate the Student Activities budget, which is the campus’ fund for student programs, such as clubs and events. The 2018-2019 fund was about $1.8 million with a significant portion of this money drawn from the Student Activities fee charged to Oswego students every semester. The fee was $116 per semester for the 2018-2019 academic year.

The budget cuts arose due to a $200,000 annual budget deficit, according to SA Finance Director Miranda Kryskow. This deficit means SA annually spent about 10% more money than it took in for the past several years.

SA has a cash reserve, but these consistent deficits have depleted those reserves to the point that SA will likely be about $96,000 in debt over the summer and will have to take loans to cover costs, according to SA fiscal advisors presenting at the April 23 meeting.

“I’m worried about [SA’s] financial position,” Kryskow said in her executive report to the SA body during the April 30 meeting as senators considered club budget appeals.

According to Kryskow’s April 23 presentation, the SA budget council was able to reduce the deficit next year to about $60,000. This would be a 70% cut of the deficit and a 7% cut in total if the $200,000 annual deficit is added to the $1.8 million fund. 

The budget council consisted of Kryskow, two student financial assistants working with the SA finance office, SA President Omar van Reenen, SA Vice President Edward Kelly and two members from SA finance committee including Sen. Baldwin Lawson, the committee chair. Budget council met for three hours a week for seven weeks, according to Kryskow, to review every budget request made and determine how much to allocate.

In the past, according to Kryskow, clubs would generally receive budgets based on their “legacy budget” or the amount a club has historically received.

“This year we’ve done something a little different,” Kryskow said. “We look[ed] through every single budget we were given and we sat down and we talked all of it out. What exact information did they give us? What is reasonable for us to support?”

Allocating funds this way was an effort to shift the culture of how clubs felt they should be funded and an effort to shrink the budget deficit in order for student activities to continue, according to Kryskow. She emphasized that some club expectations were too great given the budget SA has, especially regarding requests for certain categories.

“Lots of things that were cut were things like travel money, food, pizza, clothes. Apparel got cut 50% across the board because you’re now expected to pay 50% for your apparel,” Kryskow said. “That’s where a lot of those cuts were made.”

From the debates during SA meetings over the last few weeks, many senators agree the culture around the activities budget needs to change.

“We have to understand that even though we manage so much money as Senate, we don’t get all that money at once. It’s [paid in] installment[s],” Sen. Asheem Calixte said. “We have to be very careful in terms of the amount of debt that we rack up next year.”

This comes from information provided by Michael Flaherty, general manager of Auxiliary Services and a fiscal advisor for SA, during the April 23 SA meeting. Flaherty explained that the $1.8 million expected for the activities budget is paid by installments as students attend Oswego State for the semester. Typically, SA has a cash reserve to cover the gaps in funding between these installments. A comparison would be a savings account SA could draw on if its checking account did not have enough money to cover needed costs between paychecks. After more income, SA could replenish this savings account and avoid going into debt. However, the trend of deficit spending has depleted this reserve, and SA is in real danger of going into debt.

With some required costs like fees and professional salaries for SA support staff and club sports due in July, according to Flaherty in April, SA would have to take out a loan until a majority of students return for the fall semester and the activity budget can receive its first substantial installment in October to begin paying off that loan.

While many senators agree the cuts are necessary, there is some disagreement on exactly how the budget should be approved and if it would be better to give funding to smaller clubs that may gain more value-per-dollar or to focus on large keystone events like OzFest.

“I believe that if we were going to go into the red … let’s give [some of the money] to 12, 15 clubs rather than just one club,” Lawson said.

Other senators wanted to look closer at the larger clubs, with some budgets numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“I was not in support of going into the red; I was in support of cutting the over-budgeted clubs,” Sen. Maryjay Olaleken. “I feel like some [club’s] budget can pay a mortgage.”

A common sentiment among many students involved in SA is that clubs need to contribute financially to their own programs.

“You have to fundraise,” Olaleken said. “If you can fundraise for charity, you can fundraise for yourself.”

Photo by William Rogers | The Oswegonian