As of March 13, the Student Government Association (SGA) has spent about 59 percent of its annual budget.
According to SGA President Andrew Whyte and Vice President of Budget and Finance Tyler Lewis, this year’s budget included 11 categories. The budget allocated the largest amount of money to the category of Office Expenses ($15,194), followed by Special Events ($14,762), Co-Sponsorships ($12,311) and Public Relations ($11,285). The actual amounts of money spent are also the largest in these categories.
SGA has spent the most money on Public Relations, $9,232 which is 81 percent of the category’s budget. As Lewis explained, this category includes expenses related to increasing student awareness and knowledge of SGA. Compared to last year, the organization has spent about $1,800 more on Public Relations in an effort to become more transparent to the student body, Lewis said.
Of the four largest categories, the least amount of money has been spent on Co-Sponsorships. This category is meant to help other student organizations fund their programs. SGA has spent $5,686 of the $12,311 Co-Sponsorship budget, compared to $7,429 of the same category budget last year. Thirteen co-sponsorships have been approved and 10 are in the process of receiving approval, which SGA is expected to decide by the end of the semester.
The remaining categories in this year’s budget are blue books and scantrons, the SGA Conference, Pending Accounts, Travel, Senate Budget, Election Commission and Mid-Year Fee Allocation.
Whyte and Lewis said they believe SGA’s budget has been used efficiently so far. Whyte cited the reduction in the amount of money spent on the SGA Conference, a summer retreat that gives SGA members the chance to get to know each other and communicate goals before classes begin fall semester. Last school year, SGA spent $7,457 on the conference compared to $5,012 for this year’s conference.
Some changes are expected to be made to the budget for next year.
Lewis said a scholarship category, which will provide a need-based scholarship available for students not in SGA, will be added to next year’s budget. According to Lewis, the change is more of a suggestion to next year’s executive board but is likely to take effect.
Also, an Organizations United (OU) category will be included in next year’s budget. OU is a project SGA created to serves a platform where student organizations gather and brainstorm ways they can help improve Georgia State and give back to students. Whyte said OU has been a great success.
“Finding a way to reach as many students as possible through budget allocation is one of the things we had to talk about and we thought the biggest way to do that is through co-sponsorship,” Whyte said.
Most of the money remaining in this year’s budget will go towards helping other student organizations on campus.
Too bad it takes 500 emails, calls, meetings, and contacting some of the highest members in the school to get anywhere, or to get any of money to help out the student organizations in need… Also it appears SGA has essentially spent $20,206 on themselves between “office expenses” and their way too luxurious “$5,012” retreat that they had to cut down on after getting chewed out about spending too much last year. It’s way to hard to get anything done through SGA as a student. Communication is free… that won’t hurt the budget!
If you’re curious, the office expenses pay for the industrial printer (that student orgs and students can use for copies daily), the fax machine (which is also free for students, local faxes only) and odds and ends (nothing fancy, we’re talking sticky notes and highlighters). Believe me, as an alum who was also in SGA, there is no expense that doesn’t go through the student advisor… who is a faculty member. Although you may not agree that they are spending their funds in the wisest way, it’s foolish to say they are spending in on themselves. They barely make minimum wage in their SGA posts, which is much less than other student positions which have a lesser amount of responsibility.
Also, if you divide what was spent on the retreat by the number of people who attended (the $7400+ one) it’s still less than $190 per person, for a weekend of training. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
Ok, fair enough, but the main issue I still have is how difficult it has become to get anything done through SGA in terms of getting a cosponsorship form through and approved or a small sum of money to the organizations that don’t have any influx of cash readily available. I completely understand the logistics and process that goes into making something happen and also understand some things may not be reasonable of beneficiary to both parties, I get that. But in some cases once turned it, it’s never heard from again. It shouldn’t take contacting every member in the board and down to the staff in the office by email, phone, and letter to get a response whether or not the possibility of an aid in any form is even plausible. From my experience, if it isn’t an organization with someone closely affiliated to one of the board members, the process of getting even the slightest thing done becomes a semester long process of long lost emails, phone calls, letters, and forms that eventually just gets passed up, rather than a few forms, an approval or disapproval, and calling it a day one way or another. I love my school and I love doing anything possible to promote it big or small and I hate that I’m griping right now, I just get extremely frustrated when the organization we need the most help from as students, has to be begged and pleaded with just to get a response from in some cases.