Question answered: Where does the money go

If you’re an undergraduate student, you pay to support student groups every year. That money… If you’re an undergraduate student, you pay to support student groups every year. That money adds up to a grand total of about $2.3 million.

Do you know where your money goes?

Before money from the Student Activities Fee can fund events, it makes its way to student organizations through the allocations process. First stop: Student Government Board. As of last year, SGB has had almost total control of the distribution of the Student Activities Fee.

“For the most part, it seems that student organizations are happy that students have control of student money,” allocations chair Michelle Turbanic said. “They’ve actually received an increase in their budgets in the past few years because of the increase in the Student Activities Fee.”

The 33-percent increase that began last year brought the fee from $60 per semester to $80 per semester for full-time students, and raked in an additional $560,000 overall.

Before allocating any of the money, SGB removes a $300,000 overhead. Some of that provides for a “supply closet” to fulfill supplemental funding requests after the initial allocations process. Some goes to pay student leaders for their service to the University, and some funds Pitt passes to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Initial overhead aside, a chunk of the remaining money goes to organizations dubbed “formula groups.” These consist of the Pitt Program Council, WPTS, Student Volunteer Outreach, Telefact and the yearbook Panther Prints.

Next, SGB addresses the Student Life-affiliated groups. These groups apply in March for either a semester or a yearly budget, and a financial adviser assists each group with budgeting decisions.

Earlier this month, SGB voted that next year Student Life-affiliated groups – which are currently able to redistribute funds with their advisers’ signed approvals – will have to take major programming changes back to the board for approval.

“The change we just made was something I felt we needed to do,” President Joe Pasqualichio said. “SGB needs to be responsible for the entire Student Activities Fee and … I think it’s fair to all student groups to make it so that no group can circumvent the Student Activities Fee being looked at by SGB.”

If the allocated funds from SGB end up not meeting a student group’s needs, organizations can submit supplemental requests at any point in the year.

Taneisha Means – business manager of the Students of the Department of Africana Studies – learned in February that, out of the $18,000 her group requested, SGB had deferred $6,000.

In an attempt to access the deferred money for its event, the group began the process of filling out a program expense itemization form, on which groups cite approximate costs of all expenses for the event, including transportation, lodging, facility rental and setup costs.

“The worst thing about it was that for the whole entire [SDAS] board, this was the first time we had been in the organization,” Means said. “So we had nobody sit down with us and tell us, ‘How do you fill this out.'”

The Students of the Department of Africana Studies came before the allocations board Feb. 15 and Feb. 22.

“We found the allocations committee to be very helpful,” Means said, “but at the meeting there are about 15 to 20 committee members, and they have you stand in the corner. You feel like you’re on trial, pleading your case to them.”

On the board’s decision that Student Life-affiliated groups can no longer redistribute money with only an adviser’s signature, Means said, “I guess their reasoning was that if anything ever went wrong, they would be blamed for it, but I don’t know of an incident when that did happen.”

Back in 1997, however, something went very wrong with SGB’s own allocations. Scandal maligned the board’s reputation when then-allocations chair Gerry Klayman faced allegations of embezzling more than $4,000 from the Student Activities Fee for personal use.

His purchases included T-shirts, concert tickets, expensive restaurant meals and rental cars. The scandal prompted the entire allocations committee to resign.

Pasqualichio said that the allocations committee serves as a watchdog of the students’ money.

“We still have an issue of people creating organizations that are not trying to invite the entire student body in,” he said. “And one of the steps we’ve taken is creating an external allocations committee.”

The committee checks that groups are using money appropriately.

“They’re not out to get groups or hunt them down, just to make sure everything is legit,” Pasqualichio said. “They make sure that, if groups have stuff that’s supposed to be stored, it’s stored and not just in their apartment.”

Turbanic said that student organizations have to meet many guidelines.

First and foremost, they need official certification as a student organization.

“Then there are lots of rules and policies about what we can and cannot fund,” Turbanic said, adding that SGB can’t put money towards personal presents, alcohol, tobacco or even food – unless the event is of a cultural nature.

“So, a lot of times, organizations make requests for money, and we just can’t do it,” she said.

Pasqualichio added, “There are a lot of hours put into looking at those requests, and we look at past years’ expenditures to help us plan budgets accordingly.”

June 30 is the end of the fiscal year, and at that point, student organization accountant Jeff Donovan removes all leftover money from the groups’ bank accounts. The remainders go back to the Student Activities Fee for allocation via special requests the following year.

According to Justin D’Antonio – business manager of the Formula Society of Auto Engineers – when it comes to allocations, careful preparation of your group’s proposal goes a long way.

“As far as allocations go, this year is the best we’ve done so far, and I think it’s directly related to the amount of time we put into writing a clear and concise budget,” said D’Antonio, whose group made the allocations Top 10 list among non-Student Life-affiliated groups in the 2005-2006 school year.

At ninth place, it took in $12,759.95 in allocations, placing it just above the Ski ‘ Snowboard Club, the 10th highest-funded, at $11,796.

“The money we’re allocated by no means covers the amount that our organization needs to work every year,” D’Antonio said. “We doubled what we received from SGB by private sponsorships that we’ve done on our own and by fundraising.”

Other groups in the Top 10 include the Engineering Student Council, ranked first, Rainbow Alliance, ranked third, and UPTV, in fifth place with an allocations total of $19,320.