You can taste the bright lights, but you won’t get them for free…

College Council Minutes for 9/27/00

[welcome to the jungle]

Todd Rogers (Co-President) introduced the annual club funds allocation meeting with a warning and an explanation. The warning is that council is way out of funds this year, down 60 grand from last year, and that groups are going to be hurting for funding. There are three main reasons for this: 1) more groups, 2) less students (so smaller total pot from activities’ tax), and 3) council overspending from last year. However, the officers (Todd, Ami, Ryan, and Joe) are trying to secure more money for council (more on this later). Have faith.

Todd also explained the attendance policy for council: if you miss three meetings, you’re off council, and may only be reinstated by a council vote.

[if you’ve got the money, honey…]

Ryan Mayhew (Treasurer) launched into the budget discussions with an overall description of the funding process. Here’s a shortened, yet comprehensive version: all clubs established for over a year are grouped with similar clubs into "subgroups." Before the summer break, every group sends an estimated budget for the following year to the treasurer of CC (College Council). Over the summer, the financial committee (FinCom) looks at each group’s budget and compare it to what they received the previous year and how much they spent of monies received. After these calculations, and a careful item-by-item examination of the budget itself, FinCom comes up with a new, usually smaller budget for each club. Then they add up all the clubs in each subgroup, and assign that amount of money to the subgroup. Except this year, we’re hitting dirt at the bottom of the well, and FinCom had to take an additional 10% off the top of the reduced budgets just to keep CC in the black.

Anyhow, FinCom presented these subgroup recommendations (the original recommendations minus 10%) to council last week, and council approved them. After council approves these recommendations, they’re final, and the subgroup has exactly that much money to divide up between the groups within it.

So last Sunday, from dawn until dusk, Ryan and FinCom and all of the treasurers of student groups (minus one) met in Griffin to divide up the subgroups. For every subgroup, the treasurers met for an hour or two and whittled down their own and each other’s budgets until the total fit under the subgroup’s total allocation. And at this meeting, CC was asked to approve the group-by-group breakdowns of each subgroup.

Dan Elsea (Mark Hopkins), after this explanation, voiced his impression that this process has "an aura of inevitability" about it. Council comes into this process only to gives a thumbs-up, in which case it passes, or a thumbs-down, in which case it goes back to the treasurers to discuss the allocations again. Ryan reminded council that the treasurers themselves are in agreement over the allocations after meeting for hours. Dan’s point remains: ever since FinCom was created to take the awful burden of funding 100 established groups from Council, Council has increasingly less control over where the majority of its money goes.

Ryan wrapped up his dissertation by explaining the purpose of the general fund. The general fund is reserved for new groups (less than one year old), club nationals, and projects (like the Who’s-Responsibility-is-it? Project last year). One addition to the general fund this year is a special $10,000 incentive for SAC. This is being held out as a possible reward if SAC manages its budget appropriately this semester. Last year SAC overspent their budget by over $10,000, and as a result will receive around half of what they spent last year. However, to encourage events on campus, Council is earmarking ten grand of the general fund if SAC stays within budget for first semester.

Dan asked why the college doesn’t fund Peer Health and the Rape & Sex Assault Hotline. Ryan explained that because the groups started through college council, they have simply remained with council instead of moving away. Hopefully in the future, many groups currently funded by council can be moved to various administrative organizations, but unfortunately, probably not for this year.

-activism-

Ryan explained that the treasurers cut the Garfield Republicans down to $892.70 from $5,000 because their speaker ($4,000 of their budget) was not chosen yet, and therefore might not happen. However, when the Republicans do get a speaker, they are free to come back to council and request funding, which FinCom may endorse. Council then approved allocating funds to the activism groups as recommended: 19-1-2.

-arts-

Sankofa took a serious hit from their requested budget to final recommendation, from $5,300 to $1400. This decrease was mainly due to precedence; they have consistently received around $400 in years past, and were forced to decrease their budget by other treasurers. Kusika was also hit hard, but they do receive about $25,000 from outside funding plus concert revenues, so they took some voluntary and some involuntary cuts. Council voted to approve allocating funds to the arts groups as recommended: 22-2-2

-athletics & tournaments 1-

James Moorhead (Class of 2001) asked why cycling receives such a large chunk of this subgroup ($8,643, 23%). The cycling team treasurer responded by saying that the money goes almost entirely toward travelling expenses and tournament fees; they have no money allocated for bikes or uniforms. The reason why travelling is really expensive is because they must take their bikes with them, which means college vans (39 cents/mile, as opposed to an 11 cents/mile cost to many other teams). James and Shenil Saya (Campus At-Large) countered with a request that the cycling team collect dues from its members, and raise funds as a team. Tim Karpoff (Co-Op) raised the concern that the cycling team will be going to far more tournaments than most varsity sports (7 in the fall, 11 in the spring), and that the limited number of 10 cyclists per tournament calls the sheer amount of money that they receive into question. Dan voiced his support for the team, regardless of size, because Williams need clubs for legitimate student interests. Joe Masters (Secretary) questioned the need for club teams to require dues and fundraise – every member of the cycling team has already invested a tremendous amount of money into their bike, and a reasonable amount into a jersey. If clubs are forced to fund tournaments and travels from dues, then many teams will fold up.

John Phillips (Prospect) asked about how the athletic department would feel about funding club sports. Ryan responded that, while he is trying to work on this, the athletic department doesn’t have the funding for the club sports, is already really busy with 31 sports, and that the club sports themselves value the independence that college council funding provides them.

After a failed proposal from James to send the recommendation back to FinCom with a recommendation to only fund tournament fees and travel, CC tied in a vote to approve the recommendation 10-10-4. Todd, as president, broke the tie by voting against approving the recommendation. Thus it was sent back to FinCom with no specific recommendation. But wait! It’s not over! (Read on)

-athletics & tournaments 2-

Tim asked why the Debate Society’s budget was cut from a request of $8,000 to an allocation of $3,400. Ryan explained that the treasurer for Debate kept offering voluntary cuts throughout the time period to help the subgroup get under budget. Mayo Shattuck (Class of 2003) wondered about the number of people in the riding club (15) and men’s volleyball (17) and his experience of never seeing any publicity about either club. Ryan explained that advertisement is critical to continue receiving funding, and that both groups had advertised somewhat in the past year. Dan again defended the amount of money that individual groups receive – it is not the membership, but the niche the group fills that matters.

Rob Sica (Campus At-Large) and Matt Wessler (Off-Campus) spoke in support of FinCom and the treasurer’s meetings. Because they made the recommendations after marathon sessions of discussion, we should give serious weight to their requests. Council then voted to approve allocating funds to the athletics & tournaments 2 groups: 13-5-5.

-campus services-

Brian Kelly spoke to SAC’s current situation, which leaves them with a budget of around 65% of what they spent last year. The winter study SAC incentive is really important to them, and they will work toward budgeting frugally. Council voted to approve allocating funds to the services groups: 15-3-7

-cc operations-

Ryan explained that this new subgroup simply covers standard college council expenditures, like the shuttle service, the motor coach service, and the DA. Council then voted to approve allocating funds to cc operations: 20-2-2.

-music-

Tracy asked why some a cappella groups get more money than other groups (e.g., the Octet)? Nishant Nayyar (At-Large, FinCom) replied that, historically, some groups get more than others do because they travel more. Council then voted to approve allocating funds to music groups: 21-2-2

-publications-

All publications agreed to a common per-issue price, and so that made this subgroup a little easier to deal with. Council voted to approve allocating funds to publications: 21-1-2

-spiritualism-

The Meditation Society, didn’t show up for their treasurer’s meeting (a sure sign that your budget will be ripped to shreds by other treasurers), so they were cut from $1,400 to $400. The Newman Society’s budget request for $11,725 was sliced to $3,700 because, according to Ryan, the budget was supremely inflated, and what they received is what Newman has historically received in years past. CC voted to approve allocating funds to spiritualism groups: 21-1-3

Once again, the entire breakdown is online at http://wso.williams.edu/cc

[group recognition]

Daniel Sullivan and several other members of Williams-for-Life came to CC for council recognition of their group. Williams-for-Life is a non-sectarian activist group that wishes to spread information about the reasons why they are pro-life about abortion and the death penalty. Tim asked Daniel why the group couldn’t just run under the Newman Association, because to him the group’s platform appears to be completely aligned with the catholic faith. Daniel explained that Williams-for-Life will take members from anywhere, and that it is not necessarily a religious position to be pro-life. James worried that the CC recognition of such a group might ally the college council with the group’s ideas. Ash Bradford (Dodd) reminded council that its own bylaws remove any club’s statements from CC, and that we already recognize many activist groups (hence the activist subgroup). Council voted to recognize Williams-for-Life: 21-0-4.

Matt Silver came from Williams Club Soccer to ask for recognition. He wants a club soccer team for the many interested students who don’t make the Varsity or JV teams and still want to play other schools. There was some concern that this group did not fill an "under-represented niche" (a council guideline for recognition in the bylaws), but CC ultimately decided to recognize the club 21-1-3.

Mike Levien came from Students for Social Justice to request council recognition. The group sprouted from the "whose responsibility is it?" project last year, and seeks to empower students to take responsibility. Already they have started helping students register to vote by giving out information in Baxter mailroom. CC voted to recognize SFSJ 24-0-1.

[funding]

Nathan Briggs and Brigette Teissedre came from the fencing club to request $550 from council for fencing equipment. Originally they were going to ask for around $2,000 for extra equipment, but given the dire straits of council’s current situation, they cut their request to the bare minimum they require for functioning as a club this year. After a general lament that CC can’t fund groups what they need for real growth, we voted to give the fencing team $550: 21-3-0.

Nii Koney requested $1500 for the Williams Africans Students Organization to sponsor a fashion show ($800) and a speaker on AIDS ($700). After a short discussion on several places WASO can go to get funding for these events, Mayo proposed that WASO does not necessarily need CC funding for the AIDS speaker due to possible outside funding, and council voted to amend the proposal to just $800 for the fashion show. Council then voted to fund WASO $800: 21-0-3.

[opinions]

We ripped through opinions, and will revisit them again next week, but in brief:

One request that the CC listserver should be open to the public (right now it’s private)

A desire to see 40s allowed on campus

And a general grieving over council’s limited funding

[in the jungle]

Dan thinks that council needs to draft a resolution asking the college for an emergency cash infusion. Without additional money, almost every college-council-funded group will suffer in filling its purpose as well as it did last year.

Tim would like to see a student course survey system instated. Laddie Peterson (Class of 2002) is already working on such a system, and both Laddie and Tim will be meeting with WSO to discuss its creation.

Laddie re-addressed the question of approving the group budgets for Athletics & Tournaments 1. She said that when she voted against approval of the group, she did so thinking that all the groups could get more money. But with the way we allocate money, each subgroup is a closed system, and thus the gains of any team within the subgroup would be at the expense of another already-cut-too-much club. Then she motioned to vote again on the issue, and council requested some time to discuss it before we voted. Todd requested that if the recommendations were to be voted down again, council needed to give FinCom some guidance on how to re-allocate the funds. Tim said that he specifically wanted money taken away from Cycling’s 18 tournaments and spread among the other groups. Wessler again raised the point that the treasurers of all of the teams agreed on this budgeting, and that CC really doesn’t have much business reallocating funding for them.

In the midst of this discussion, two council members, Mayo and James, left the room, apparently to avoid quorum (CC must have 2/3 of all voting members cast a vote for a constitutionally valid vote). However, with 29 current voting members, council voted 17-1-2, just barely at quorum, to approve the allocations for the athletics & tournaments 1 groups. This concluded the subgroup approvals, and now every group within a subgroup is funded to the amount agreed upon in treasurers’ meetings.

[notes from the secretary]