The Associated Student Body Treasury Department capped Student Activity Fee requests for the spring semester on Tuesday, April 8, leaving some registered student organizations scrambling to fund activities planned for the remainder of the semester.
ASB Treasurer Sean Giamportone, a junior biomedical engineering major, said that RSOs submitted more than 400 requests over the last four months, which he said is an increase from last semester.
“We anticipated that the allocated funds would be fully utilized by the end of the semester. However, we understand that the exact time is entirely dependent on the volume and scale of the funding requests we receive,” Giamportone said. “This semester, we saw a particularly high level of engagement from our RSOs requesting, and our goal as the Treasury Department is to allocate as many resources as possible to continue ensuring the success of our various student organizations. The depletion of funds demonstrates a strong student involvement and demand for funding.”
Despite funding requests being capped, Giamportone said that it is standard practice to leave a minimum amount of funds in the account. RSOs that placed requests on the ForUM prior to the cap were still considered for funding.
“Approvals were dependent on available funds, event-specific funding caps and overall allocation guidelines. As a result, some organizations were able to receive funding, while others did not meet the criteria needed for approval,” Giamportone said.
More than $425,000 was allocated to RSOs over the course of the semester before the Treasury Department sent an email to RSO leaders on Wednesday, April 9, that announced the semester’s funding limit had been reached.
The SAF contributes to student programming throughout the academic year and is calculated at $2 per credit hour for each student, according to the University of Mississippi’s website. RSOs may apply for up to $6,000 dollars of funding each semester, according to the ASB website.
There are also funds available for large scale programming and events that cater to the entire UM community. The Treasury Department judges requests on an individual basis, and the selected programming is contingent upon funds available at the time of the request. Students, including the treasurer and a team of comptrollers, have discretion on whether these events receive funding.
Square Magazine — a student-run fashion magazine and RSO — planned to put in a SAF request to fully fund its fifth print edition. The SAF funded half of last year’s Square Magazine print edition, while the remaining funding came from the School of Journalism and New Media.
Square Magazine’s Editor in Chief Emma Greene, a senior journalism major from Oxford, sent an email hours before Giamportone’s email to RSO leaders that asked how many copies of the magazine the SAF would be able to fund. Square Magazine’s quote for its fifth print edition was $2,888 for 200 print copies, $3,598 for 300 and $4,796 for 400. The organization received SAF funds earlier this semester — approximately $250 for an Issuu subscription and $20 for graduation cords.
Over the years, several community businesses and residents have offered Square Magazine partial funding, but Greene is uncomfortable asking for those leaders to cover the full amount.
“I have not been following up with these community members who said that they would be willing to donate if we were ever to collect just because I really hate sticking my hands out when I thought we had the SAF fund to rely on,” Greene said.
Greene said the magazine will be published on Issuu — a digital publishing website — regardless of what happens with the physical copies. A cover reveal party will still be held at Harrison’s Yard on Monday, April 28.
Physical copies will not be ready by the cover reveal party, and Greene is not anticipating physical copies of the magazine to be available at all this semester. She said that next year’s editors in chief will likely have the final say on whether they print copies in the fall.
“As for this year, my plan right now is just to upload it on Issuu and see what the team chooses to do next year,” Greene said. “I will have graduated, but if they wanted to send me a copy, I think that would be lovely.”
The Ole Miss Undergraduate Law Society (OMULS) had plans to distribute t-shirts and hoodies to all members and host an end-of-semester party with food. Like Greene, OMULS Treasurer Landen Vanstory planned to submit requests for the merchandise and food. Instead, OMULS will pay for the sweatshirts through member dues, which are $25 per semester. The sweatshirts will cost OMULS $2,400.
“We ended up having to cancel our two merch orders, and we had to shift direction and do something that was a little cheaper that could fit in the budget we have now that we were severely limited,” Vanstory, a junior management major from Memphis, said. “We were also planning to do an end-of-semester party, but after funding our merch with our personal dues, we can’t afford to do a party. So we’re either going to have to utilize our personal exec funds and kind of throw together something or not do anything.”
What might the “personal exec fund” be?
“That would be our personal pockets,” Vanstory said.
The end-of-semester party was planned for April 29, and Vanstory said OMULS Exec is still keeping that date open in hopes of hosting some type of meeting or party.
“It’ll most likely be a regular meeting, and maybe we can scramble a little money between the six of us on exec. But you know, I also don’t like asking people to use their personal money for things,” Vanstory said. “I’m a college student, too; I understand. I don’t like paying for anything that I have to, and so I definitely would never want to ask someone (for money).”
Vanstory does not point blame at anyone for the SAF reaching its cap, but he did voice frustration with how the information was conveyed.
“I’m definitely not mad or upset. I understand why it happened, but it’s definitely frustrating because of how we were told the news,” Vanstory said. “I think people would have been less frustrated if maybe in the weeks prior we were kind of told, ‘Hey, we’re reaching the limit. Please try and get your requests in, and as long as we can make it work, we’ll try to approve it.’”
Increasing funding for the SAF would take a vote by the student body.
“In order to increase the Student Activity Fee per student, a vote by the student body would be required. While an increase to the SAF is not currently being considered, we are exploring adjustments to how certain funding categories may be capped in the upcoming academic year,” Giamportone said. “We would also like to note that we did not suspend allocations until two weeks prior to our originally planned date, so there are no current plans to increase the SAF per student.”
Giamportone looks forward to next semester, when the SAF will likely expand with a predicted influx of students.
“We’re looking forward to allocating funds to RSOs this fall, and with the potential for increased enrollment, we anticipate having more resources to support student organizations,” Giamportone said.
Editor’s note: This story originally said community members offered Square Magazine partial funding as a result of SAF being capped. The story now reflects that the community members have been offering to help partially fund Square Magazine for years.
