Behind the scenes of Casino Night on Feb. 11, the four undergraduate student councils were talking business.
The complications of funding this event, which transformed Lerner Hall into a casino for students, shed light on the larger challenge of how the councils divide student life funds across the four boards.
The four councils each pay different amounts for events and other projects. Their contribution amount is determined by a ratio according to each school’s student population and number of expected event attendees. The ratio of the General Studies Student Council to the Engineering Student Council to the Barnard Student Government Association to the Columbia College Student Council is approximately .5 to 1 to 2 to 3, according to Jacqueline Thong, vice president of finance for GSSC.
But funding actual events is not always as simple as this ratio.
The funding for each of the councils comes from a student life fee built into students’ tuition, and the amount differs at every school according to the student body size and the percentage of students that typically attend events. For Columbia College and SEAS, it is about 99 dollars per student, while at Barnard it is 78 dollars per student, said Nuriel Moghavem, vice president of funding for CCSC. When it comes to General Studies, the number fluctuates depending on the changes in enrollment of part-time and full-time students, Thong said.
But because Columbia College often has more money than the other schools, CCSC sometimes picks up the other schools’ slack, Moghavem said.
He said that as a result of the different ratios, sometimes a council doesn’t have enough money to contribute to either a school-specific event or four-council event. When this happens, he said, “CCSC is happy to help out the other councils when they can.”
He added, “We see student life as not divided between one school or another but very much shared by the students of every school at Columbia.”
At Casino Night, paying for the prizes by the ratio was initially challenging. Because of the council’s different payment methods, the giveaways were bought with the SGA credit card.
“Because of the immense amount of red tape at Columbia University, it was easier to buy it on that credit card,” Moghavem said. The College has a rule that says no prizes can be bought on a University credit card, but Barnard does not.
As SGA works as a governing board as well as a student council, any group under SGA with an account number and adviser at Barnard’s College Activities Office can use the credit card. Barnard’s contributions to Casino Night were made in part through the prize purchases on the SGA credit card.
While the SGA will be reimbursed for the prizes bought, this speaks to the larger problem of how difficult it can be to get things done at Columbia, Moghavem said.
Katherine Edwards, GS, and student body president for GSSC, was unaware that SGA had bought the prizes on their credit card, but did say that although not this year, there have been times in the past where other councils, particularly CCSC, have given other councils money.
Whitney Green, SEAS ’10, was also unaware that the prizes had been purchased on the SGA credit card, but said that this was not unusual. “It’s an organized chaos at first, and then once the event is passed we always settle who needs to be paid back.”
The secretary of the Student Governing Board—the board that doles out money to, among others, religious, political, humanitarian and activist campus groups—Beezly Kiernan, CC ’11, is proposing a credit card initiative that, if approved, would change the payment process so that event costs would go straight to a debit card.
Katie Palillo, BC ’10 and SGA president, said that she hopes the councils can work out an agreement to make the whole process easier. “We pay in ratio based on the size of our student bodies but the four VP finances have been working on inter-council agreement which would be better able to assess how much money each council should fairly put into events.”
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