Alex Gervais ’28
Managing Editor
As the yearly club budgeting process begins, Trinity’s Student Government Association has made a change in policy, removing the $250 minimum allocation for student organizations.
Funding for organizations is determined by the SGA Budget Committee, a public committee any Trinity student can apply to join. It’s currently led by VP of Finance Pat McCarron ’27 and has a total of 40 seats, although in recent years less than 10 have been occupied. Budget policy is broadly controlled by the President and VP of the committee and the Office of Student Leadership and Engagement, but the SGA Presidents also serve an advisory role.
In order to access funding, student organizations must go through the formal process to get recognized by SLE and SGA, including having a designated club treasurer who has completed the mandated training. They must also present at an SGA Budget Committee meeting and will receive a determination on funding availability in the days following that meeting. This funding comes from the student activity fund, which is sponsored by the $215 fee students pay each semester. Funding from this fee also goes to sponsoring shows for students at the Austin Arts Center and the Bantam Bus pass.
The Tripod spoke to SGA presidents Maddi Petrow ’27 and Sriram Jetty ’28 to contextualize this funding shift. Petrow characterized the change as seeing “that clubs need to be allocated a little bit more efficiently and evenly. Some clubs were getting a baseline of $250 and they weren’t spending it, so we sort of took that baseline away. However, if clubs come in asking for $250, we’re quite generous, I like to believe.”
They both emphasized that funding is available to SGA recognized student organizations, but that they will require concrete plans to access funds. They also highlighted that there is no clawback mechanism for funding: “once we give it to them, we can’t take it back” said Jetty. This money disappears after a year, if it remains unused by clubs it will not be reallocated from the student activity fund by administration. “We’ve been losing a lot of money,” said Jetty on the lack of reallocations.
Some active student organizations have reported larger changes to their baseline club allocations than they expected. The Tripod spoke to Prithvi Satish ’27, president of the Men of Color Alliance (MOCA) about his organization’s baseline allocation changing: “last year, we received $11,000 and we were approved for a $1500 request in the middle of the year… at the beginning of this year we got $5000.” Satish noted that MOCA did not receive an official advanced warning from SGA about their baseline allocation decreasing, but also emphasized the club anticipates to retain prior year funding once it presents at Budget Committee: “I trust that SGA is doing their best and I look forward to working as partners in supporting student activities on campus.”
