Students typically have no choice but to react to the crumbling economy around them, but members of the student government at one of the top liberal arts schools in the country are taking their peers’ financial aid into their own hands.
Amherst College’s Association of Students voted in favor of a $70,000 gift to the school for financial aid and the salaries of low-income staff members March 11. However, Boston University students and officials said a similar gift was unlikely.
At Amherst, unused money from student activities is placed into an account where it accumulates interest. The money had been set aside as a reserve fund for unexpected circumstances, Amherst junior and student government member Marcus Bradbury said.
‘We thought, this is the circumstance,’ Bradbury said. ‘So we thought we can benefit the students in the long run by making a statement about student priorities.’
BU Student Activities Office Assistant Director Jeff Murphy said BU does not have a similar reserve account. The $1.2 million SAO receives as a fraction of the undergraduate student fee goes toward nine different programs such as the Programming Council and Residence Hall Association, Murphy said. Leftover money is used to make up deficits that other clubs may have accumulated, but the amount leftover is small.
‘At the end of any given year, there aren’t tens of thousands of dollars lying around,’ he said. ‘I think our student organizations are doing a great job with the limited funds they have allocated to them.’
Student Debate Society Vice President Ryan Cross said although he would be open to giving a financial aid gift to BU, his club already received too little funding.
‘Debate doesn’t get enough,’ Cross, a College of Arts and Sciences senior, said. ‘We’ve been getting money, but we go somewhere else every weekend.”
Student Union President Matt Seidel said that he was open to reviewing the SAO funding policy, however any action taken by Union would not use Amherst’s actions as an exact model.
‘The worst thing we could do is say, ‘Let’s do this’ without talking about it first,’ Seidel, a CAS junior, said. ‘To go rashly into this would make this situation even worse.’
SAO and Allocations Board should take the initiative on the issue, Seidel said.
‘I think the first thing they should do is conduct a thorough review of how the money has been spent over the past year,’ he said.
Seidel said this is one of many examples that shed light on the need for greater transparency between BU’s bureaucracy and the students.
‘We need to have a more direct dialogue about it,’ Seidel said.
Though BU students lauded Amherst’s students’ actions, such charitable actions are not always possible, Murphy said.
‘ ‘I think it’s a really easy decision when you have $70,000 lying around,’ he said.
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