The Student Assembly voted on Thursday to approve a 37,850 dollar operating budget for the 2024-2025 academic year, marking a 45 percent decrease from the 68,605 dollars allocated for the last academic year.
According to S.A. Vice President of Finance Niles Hite ’26, one reason for this drastic decrease was to prevent committees’ excess spending on food and other expenses for Assembly-related meetings.
The S.A. budget is allocated across 17 expense categories, including “Internal Operations,” “Diversity” and “Academic.”
According to Hite, thousands of dollars were spent on food for Assembly meetings during the 2023-2024 academic year.
“I am not sure the exact amount, but [the amount spent on food was] definitely way more than what it should have been,” Hite wrote in an email to The Sun. “For me, I wanted to make sure that the money was going towards initiatives within the Assembly for the students that elected us rather than taking care of ourselves which is why I made it a lot lower than what it was last year.”
The budget of the Student Assembly is allocated from the Student Activity Fee. Through the SAF, students indirectly contribute to the assembly’s funding.
“No money should be taken out for any pleasures for the Student Assembly,” Hite said. “We are here for the students to do stuff for campus — we should be doing that with the money that we are giving them.”
The Assembly began offering catered meals at meetings last year, but the absence of a defined budget led to significant overspending on food, according to Hite.
“When people were meeting for certain committees for several hours, they would spend a lot of money on erroneous catering that they did not need to do, like very specialized food for each individual person, which would cost a lot of money, especially if they’re meeting every single week,” Hite said. “Basically, some of that money either would come out of the initial budget, or it would be pulled from the reserves.”
While allocating the budget for this year, Hite decreased the amount of funds committees receive, hoping it discourages extraneous spending. In addition to spending less money, the S.A. plans to implement stricter procedures for spending.
“I’ve definitely expressed in as clear-as-day terms I possibly can to the people with these smaller budgets, be as efficient as you possibly can,” Hite said.
S.A. Vice President Adam Vinson ’25 also has plans to make committee spending more effective.
“There [are] a few committees where I’m going to be talking with people who are chairs and basically asking if it’s possible if we can move some money around so that [the] committees that might need it more will get that funding they need,” Vinson said.
While serving as chair of the S.A. Environmental Committee and CALS representative last year, Vinson noticed that the Environmental Committee received more money than they used.
“When I chaired [the Environmental Committee], we never ate, [so] we never used [the funds],” Vinson said. “So I’m going to be giving that money to special funding projects, if I’m allowed to, which is the money that is requested by clubs and organizations that need it to host projects, whether they be trips or they’re trying to purchase an item.”
Clarification, Sept. 14, 8:43 p.m.: This article has been updated to provide a more accurate description of how students indirectly contribute to the Student Assembly’s funding.