Administration

Why Was the Student Assembly’s Budget Slashed? According to the V.P. of Finance, One Reason Was to Curb Food Spending.

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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.”

A portion of the undergraduate student activity fee is allocated to student organizations by the Student Activities Funding Commission. The SAFC is one of several sources of funding for the S.A., so 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.

News

The Yellow Deli, Local Restaurant Owned by ‘White Supremacist Cult,’ Accepts Cornell City Bucks

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During the two-week long strike that saw more than 1,000 Cornell workers walk out and closures of eateries around campus, Cornell gave 50 City Bucks to students on some University meal plans. In late August, a sign appeared in The Yellow Deli’s window that City Bucks and Ithaca College Bomber Bucks, a similar Ithaca College currency for buying food, would be accepted at the restaurant.