DCGA passes budget for 2019-20 year

ZACH CORREIA, News Editor—218 days passed between the climatic events of last semester’s last DCGA meeting where the body failed to pass a budget for all student organizations and two Tuesdays ago when the Student Senate finally approved that budget.

The initial 2019-2020 student organization budgets were called into question due to perceived racial bias on the part of some members of the DCGA Finance Committee — the committee that prepares the student organization budget.

At the end of last school year, student organizations were left in the dark wondering when they returned to campus in August if they would have individual budgets to carry out their programs and events.

In not wanting to harm student organizations it was announced via a student body email by Dean Fox on August 19, that “interim allocated budgets to student organizations” would be funded directly by the Student Activity Fee.

The Student Activity Fee is a fee that all students pay that goes funding of student organizations and events and currently stands at $255 per student.
The DCGA Constitution gives the Student Senate the authority as the “sole distributor” of the Student Activity Fee.

No votes were taken authorizing spending of the Student Activity Fee before December 2, 2019.

To resolve the controversy surrounding the allocation of the 2019-2020 student organization budget, a resolution sponsored by Student Body President Owen Crum was approved at the first senate meeting of the semester establishing an Ad Hoc committee.

The committee, per the resolution, was charged with “consideration of additional appeals requests” by any student organization. The resolution also charged DCGA with approving “the 2019-2020 student organization budget… by October 1, 2019.” That deadline passed and no enforcement of the provision was carried out.

The Ad Hoc Committee accepted appeals form student organizations up to September 20, 2019, and heard eight appeals total.

Only four organizations were granted additional money by the committee and are listed below in the table.

The Ad Hoc Committee did not grant additional money to the following organizations: the College Republicans, Fraternity-Sorority-Life Collaboration, Global China Connection, and the Panhellenic Council.

The final student budget for the 2019-2020 academic year stands at $960,490.43. This extra money was taken from the Reserve Fund.