By Christina Littlefield
Graduate Assistant
Dividing up thousands of dollars is never a pleasant affair – especially when there are several competing interests.
Such a task has led to bickering in the past among Inter-Club Council representatives as they decide how to share the $20,000 allocated to them from Student Government Association fees. Last year, for instance, the meetings turned into what one observer called a “big brawl,” running for three and a half hours as each club presented and was questioned on a line-item detail of their budgets for the year.
This year, however, club members voted that they would rather go home.
ICC Representatives passed the budget without debate, as presented by ICC Chair and SGA Vice president Giuseppe Nespoli, based on a motion by Student Alumni Organization representative Lee Diaz. The motion passed without debate by 26 of the 34 clubs present at the Oct. 14 meeting.
“I felt that it was in the best interest of keeping good relations in the clubs if we didn’t argue about each individual club’s budgets, because we all had to deal with the cut in the 25 percent of our budget,” Diaz said, referring to the 25 percent maximum ICC will cover of a club’s events budgets. “Since we all took the cut together, except for the few whose budgets were so small, it wasn’t worth fighting over.”
Most of the clubs were allocated about 12 percent of their budget, except for a few clubs who had requested less than $100, from the $13,054.53 left over after a $1,500 Family Barbecue promoting the clubs and the $5,000 allocated to the new Sports Club Council. Individual club allocations ranged from as low as $23.75 for the Students in Free Enterprise organization to as high as $1,437.48 for the Pepperdine International Club. All expenditures supplemented by ICC must be for events, and while club meetings count, the ICC constitution prefers that events be inclusive of students outside of the organization as well as within to benefit the maximum number of students possible.
The ICC funding is designed to supplement clubs until they can do their own fundraising, and is also set up to organize all-club events such as the Family Barbecue, MardiCarts at Homecoming and the ICC awards banquet in the spring.
Several of the clubs expressed disappointment that they didn’t get the 25 percent of their budgets allowed by the ICC constitution, and questioned the amount spend on the barbecue, but overall said they understood that there was only so much money to give.
“I don’t think all of us were as happy as we would be if we got the full 25 percent, but that’s just not going to happen,” Diaz said. There are so many dueling interests.”
Pepperdine Improve Troupe representative Justin Schneider agreed.
“(Diaz) recognized that no matter what happened, there was no way to please all the people,” Schneider said. “Any money that was going to be given extra to another group was going to be taken away from a group.”
The passed budget included a contingency fund that grew to $745.11 after three clubs didn’t attend the budget meeting, a mandatory requirement to receive funding.
Most of the contingency money was divided among three resolutions at the following meeting Monday. The 13 club representatives who attended the meeting voted to allocate $200 more the Pepperdine International Club, $200 to the Up ‘Til Dawn philanthropy club to benefit St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and $161.72 for the Latino Student Association.
The Up ‘Til Dawn allocation was increased from $90 to $200 in an unprecedented amendment from Schneider. Usually resolutions are altered to give the organization less money, not more.
“It’s obvious that everybody wanted more money, but the goals and the purpose of Up ‘Til Dawn were the only one that I felt were truly for good, not just for a diversion and something to do but as something that was set up to help serve people,” Schneider said. “… They are the only ones there that the purpose is not to please themselves and to put on good events for themselves but to raise money for St. Jude’s hospital, which does amazing things for kids.”
The organization also received $169 this month from the SGA philanthropy fund.
A petition from the Debate Club for $200 was tabled because a representative was not at the meeting because she – like the majority of the ICC – hadn’t gotten the e-mail Nespoli had sent out about the resolutions. Nespoli did, however, announce at the meeting the week before that he expected a lot of resolutions for the contingency money and that they would be voted on at the next meeting. Only the honor societies and professional clubs were required to attend.
Clubs can still petition the ICC for the $183.39 left in the contingency fund, but there are a few clubs – such as the Debate Club – already upset that the majority of the extra funding has been given out.
Nespoli voiced concern in a phone interview that some clubs were angry they missed the meeting, but he said that there was little he could do about it.
“I can’t take back what they voted on and what they decided,” Nespoli said. “What is already voted on can’t be undone.”
The eight clubs that were against passing the budget as is had wanted to see how each club intended to spend their money, a move they said factored in accountability.
“In years past they passed out detailed budgets from every club,” sophomore Taryn Ishida of the Hawaii Club said. “It was hard to look at a lump sum and decide without knowing the club’s intention. It’s hard to make a choice when you are not informed.”
ICC representative and Public Relations Student Society of America Treasurer Jaclyn Tully agreed, adding that she wanted to know what events some clubs with more than $8,000 in budgets were planning.
Her club took a hit in funding as well because their publicity costs were taken out of the association’s events budgets as per ICC regulations. However, the PRSSA club is a professional club for publicity, and Tully said she believes that educational and professional clubs should receive more funding than clubs that are social in nature.
“Educational and professional clubs should be taken into consideration that SGA isn’t spending their money on bowling night,” Tully said.
Several club representatives noted that budgets are often padded to get more money for the organization. Most often clubs overestimate food costs or add food costs to regular meetings – often $75 to $100 a week. More than $18,000 of the $110,406.21 in events budgets presented by the clubs was for food.
Other clubs, such as the Black Student Union, add as many events as they can to their budget to get more money and then put on what events they can with the percentage they do get and their membership dues.
“You have to request as much as you possibly can to get what you need,” sophomore BSU Treasurer Candice Bob said.
She sees this as the rules of the game.
“All the same, the $500 I got is not enough to put on what I need in any way, shape or form,” Bob said.
Nespoli is aware that some clubs pad their budgets or don’t always execute all of their proposed events, and has asked clubs to fill out evaluation forms for each scheduled even on their budgets to check that and improve accountability.
He also advises clubs who really need more money to petition other channels through SGA for money, such as the General Fund or the Initiative for the Development of Events and Activities (IDEA) fund through Ocean’s 37.
“If they present a strong enough case, it’s most likely they will get what they need,” Nespoli, whom almost all club representatives said was doing a great job with the resources ICC has. “If they come in saying, ‘we need cash,’ it’s usually not going to fly.”
October 24, 2002
