No public record of student group spending

Although undergraduate Pitt students pay into the Student Activities Fund each semester, that… Although undergraduate Pitt students pay into the Student Activities Fund each semester, that doesn’t guarantee them the right to know how the University spends their money.

The $2.5 million Student Activities Fund, which is derived from the $80 Student Activities Fee that most students pay each semester, is a pot of money and almost half of which is annually distributed among some of the highest-profile student groups on campus with no public record of how they spend it.

The Student Activities Fund is considered University revenue, and under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, Pitt does not have to disclose publicly how it spends its money. The only records Pitt must make public are its 990 tax forms.

But Associate Dean and Director of Student Life Kenyon Bonner provided the dollar amount of the portion of the Student Activities Fee that each of the five formula groups receives.

Essentially, Pitt’s Office of Student Life grants authority to the Student Government Board to make regular public allocations to fund student events and programs. But first, a portion of the money is divided among the formula groups: yearbook, the radio station, TeleFact, the Pitt Program Council and a student-run community service program called Student Volunteer Outreach.

The five formula groups — Pitt Program Council, Student Volunteer Outreach, TeleFact, Panther Prints and WPTS-FM — together receive a total of 48.5 percent of the fund each year, but Student Affairs will not disclose how the money is spent, though it keeps records of annual expenditures. SGB does not have authority over the annual allotments of the formula groups or their spending.

The Board distributes the other 51.5 percent of the fund to various student organizations during its weekly public meeting. The organizations must request funding from SGB, and there is a public record of the distribution of funds.

“The Student Activities Fee is called the Student Activities Fee, but it’s University money,” Bonner said. “The final decision on anything Student Activities Fee is Student Affairs.”

Bonner said that the students involved in formula groups know where the money is spent, but all decisions about making the budgets and expenditures public are up to the Office of Student Life, which is under the authority of Vice Provost and Dean of Students Kathy Humphrey.

Bonner said the University does not release staff salaries — except for those of the top 25 highest-paid employees, as required by the Right-to-Know Law. Also, many of the contracts found in the formula groups’ budgets have nondisclosure clauses. And Bonner said it is not a “general practice of most businesses” to release such information.

Bonner denied requests to provide an aggregate of formula group staff salaries, which include salaries of faculty members and students, without names and to provide the cost of contracts without nondisclosure agreements.

“As a normal form of business, it’s not wise to advertise the lowest way you pay for something,” he said. “When you are releasing information, you have to be careful with what you are releasing … I don’t want to hurt our negotiating power.”

Bonner gave the example of putting on a concert at Pitt. If a stage company knew what the University had paid previously for a concert, the company would negotiate based on that information, he said.

Tom Misuraca, the assistant director of Student Life and the faculty adviser for Pitt Program Council, agreed with Bonner that releasing budget items would hurt negotiating power. But he did say that students choose how to spend the money.

“The organization is here for recreational activities for the student community,” Misuraca said. “[Every program] that comes out of here comes from students.”

Misuraca said that more than 250 students are involved in PPC, and they decide what programs to bring to campus. Students are technically not allowed to make money offers to individuals or organizations that they want to bring to campus. Instead, Misuraca works with students to solidify contracts.

“[We] work together with mutual respect,” he said.

Bonner said that in the 1980s, Student Affairs decided that it needed a better system for on-campus programming. It was at this time that the University created the Pitt Program Council, and since then, the group has received a significant portion of the Student Activities Fund.

Senior Matt Auger, a Spanish and business major and the PPC’s executive board director, said that a lot of his time is spent bouncing ideas off other committee members to formulate plans for student programming.

“We try to make everything as close to free as possible, when possible,” Auger said. “[Students] are paying that money.”

He said that some events, such as the annual trip to New York, do require students to pay extra money because only a limited number can attend. But he said that big events, such as Bigelow Bash and most lectures, are free because of funding provided by the Student Activities Fund.

Misuraca said he could not disclose the costs of these events and said that questions about his budget should be directed to Bonner.

The on-campus progressive radio station, 92.1 WPTS-FM, also relies on student input for the distribution of its funds. But as with the other groups, students do not have the only or final say in how the money is spent.

Gregory Weston, the faculty advisor for WPTS, said that he oversees the purchasing of the radio equipment, but students make the recommendations.

Weston said that most of the WPTS equipment is at least 5 years old, and that the station will run the equipment until it breaks. He said that he likes to keep the equipment up to date so that students are acclimated to what they might see in the professional radio industry post-graduation.

“So much of our equipment is so expensive,” Weston said. “We try to carry over as much as we can to save up for a major purchase.”

In December 2011, Weston had to make an emergency purchase after a transmitter broke and knocked the station off air for two days. He said the transmitter cost between $2,000 and $3,000. But he would not release any more information about the WPTS budget.

SGB President James Landreneau said that he has been talking with Terrence Milani, the Student Life associate director, and SGB Allocations Chair Mike Nites about the distribution of the Student Activities Fund. Landreneau said that he is uncertain whether the percentages of funds for the formula groups should continue at the current levels.

“I am looking to see if the formula groups actually need that money,” Landreneau said. He also acknowledged that he does not have “jurisdiction” over the formula groups’ funding.

The percentages of the Student Activities Fund that formula groups receive have not changed since 2009 when the Student Government Board passed a resolution that established the current percentages of funding.

Any changes to the percentages would require approval by Bonner and Humphrey.

When asked if he would release where the money was being spent if the Board suggested it to him, Bonner said that he would consider the Board’s recommendation.

“Student Affairs merely delegated authority [to the SGB] … We don’t operate independent of the University,” Bonner said, referring to the Student Government Board. “I would listen to [the Board’s] feedback and tell them what we are comfortable with as an institution.”