Members of the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences school received an update from CDS Student Government senators regarding the allocation of the Community Service Fee, sparking discussions among students and clubs about funding.
The Community Service Fee is a mandatory fee included in tuition for all full-time undergraduate students, which is pooled to fund various student activities. Undergraduate student organizations are eligible to request funding from the Allocation Board, which oversees the distribution process.
“Every undergraduate student at BU pays $73 into this community service fee, and in total, it accumulates to about $2.9 million that gets distributed to all the stakeholders in the BU community,” said CDS senator Sean Sun. “We hold negotiations every spring to delegate all the funds from that $2.9 million into all their accounts to be used for the entire year.”
The CDS senators said student voices and opinions are represented through stakeholders, who are elected to represent each college in the main meetings.
“Everyone that goes to these meetings are elected,” said Sean Sun. “We really want to stress voting. It’s the easiest way for [students] to get [their] opinions through to the larger student government.”
CDS senator Peter Emero said previous yearly discussions involved stakeholders trading percentages of the fund with each other, to meet funding requests. This year, the process has changed, with all stakeholders participating in a vote on the negotiation process.
“We’re doing it in a different way to try to better get the money to where more people need it,” Emero said.
Danielle Sopko, senior director of student affairs operations and strategy, wrote in an email to The Daily Free Press that the Student Activities Office is not involved in the funding allocation process.
According to the senators, negotiation meetings began last Sunday, with another slated for this coming Sunday.
“We’re making good progress, we’re about halfway through [and] we should be done very soon,” Sean Sun said. “We’re just going through the process smoothly, holding negotiations with all of the stakeholders and their representatives.”
CDS junior Araba Aidoo, president Tech Talks, a computer science-focused club, said the support from the Allocation Board was “amazing and great.”
“We put in our funding request [to the] Allocations Board early this semester and we got three of our events approved,” Aidoo said. “They really … try their best to really support [all clubs].”
Aidoo said the process of requesting funding is straightforward.
“You just put in the event that you want, the purpose of the event and then documenting exactly how much that you would need for this event to succeed,” Aidoo said. “If that event gets approved, then they give you that amount. It’s based off of what you ask.”
Vince Sun, a CDS sophomore and co-president of the Data Science Association, said the Allocation Board’s requirement for funding requests to be submitted before the end of the previous semester created complications for his club.
“It was kind of a hassle, double checking all the descriptions of what qualifies and what doesn’t qualify,” he said. “That took a bit of time, just going through all the documents and finding stuff that works.”
The CDS senators said they are working to ensure the Community Service Fund meets students’ needs while also securing approval from BU administration.
Emero said once negotiations are decided, meetings will be held with smaller stakeholder groups to ensure everyone is “on the same page about how they’re funded.”
Then, the Senate will draft a bill to BU administration by early April with the negotiated funding, so BU administration can set the budget for the upcoming academic year.
“It’s nice to see that students are doing it, and I understand how difficult it may be,” Aidoo said. “If we can get more funding from Boston University as a whole, that would be amazing too.”
