On Wednesday, April 1, 2026, the Student Union Executive Council decided that it knew better than the voting population of WashU.

By a vote of 4-2, Student Union’s Executive Council decided it would like to change the student organization status of Emergency Support Team (EST), a group of volunteer student EMTs, from a block-funded group to an Executive Entity. Student Union (SU) did so with the expressed intention of ensuring that EST would receive funding that the student body voted it would not receive during the Spring 2026 SU Election. SU took it to be their charge to correct what it saw as democracy getting something wrong.

After it became clear that EST would not receive the funding I, as vice president of finance (VPF), had set aside for them in balancing the FY2027 General Budget, University leaders and Campus Life staff became concerned, inquiring about other methods by which SU could fund EST, despite failing to meet the two-thirds threshold required to get block funding under SU’s governing documents. Responding to these calls, SU’s Executive Council voted to recognize EST as an Executive Entity, effectively declaring that, unlike other student organizations, EST does not need to follow established procedures for group recognition and funding. 

EST failed to obtain the required votes by fewer than a dozen; the small margin, however, does not change the fact that they failed to meet the required vote count. We would not accept an appeal or resolution, failed even by one vote, as a reason to upend SU’s processes. The money set aside for EST has since been reallocated to the Budgets and Appeals Allocations Board, meaning that the funds originally set aside for EST were placed into the account for student group programming, not Executive Entities. It seems that should be the end of it, but SU has decided otherwise. 

Setting aside the vital service that EST provides to the University community, SU’s choice to alter EST’s status sets a concerning precedent in which groups that receive block funding no longer have to meet the requirements to receive it because SU will bail them out.

To make EST an Executive Entity is to place them under the direct supervision of SU’s Executive Council, with an SU executive serving as the entity’s advisor, and to require the SU president to select an “entity leader” that must be confirmed by the legislative branches of SU. More crucially, Executive Entities submit their budgets for balancing by the VPF during the General Budget process. This is not too dissimilar from how EST currently receives their funding, but instead of being limited to what is recommended by the VPF, the SU Constitution states that Executive Entities “have the right to appeal to the Executive Council for additional funding, subject to the approval of the Vice President of Finance.” Given they secured no budget, all of EST’s requests for the next fiscal year would be appeals. There is nothing that limits how much the next Executive Council could allocate to EST from the Executive Appeals Account. They could allocate the originally recommended $72,000, less, or more. It is expected that other entities will rely heavily on funds from the Executive Appeals Account. As a result, money will very likely have to be moved from SU’s Carryforward (the account that all unspent Student Activities Fee money moves to at the end of a fiscal year) to supplement the Executive Appeals Account, or they will have to directly transfer the Carryforward money into EST’s account. 

Rather than reevaluating EST’s budget, taking the money from the Carryforward account, and sending it over to the relevant University department that would then manage EST, thus assisting them without growing SU’s involvement in this group, SU opens the door to allocating the group FY2027 monies. Whether or not they utilize those monies, however, does not address the concerns that SU is bailing out EST despite the results of the spring election. 

It is unclear whether SU will maintain EST as an Executive Entity, allowing them to never navigate that process again, or if they will de-recognize them after a year, allowing the Activities Committee to shift EST to a Category I student group. I fail to understand why SU should maintain block funding as a procedure if they will create loopholes when they do not like the results of an election, loopholes that would certainly make life easier for the block-funded groups themselves (assuming Senate and Treasury would approve them as entities). 

What is clear, however, is that a majority of the Executive Council is concerned with how the University will view their next steps. After being asked to come to a solution, that is, to fund EST despite the vote, SU moved swiftly to resolve what it saw as an error on the part of the voters. Members made it clear that they were more concerned with SU’s relationship to the University than they were maintaining the results of the election. Without the University having to come to the Executive Council meeting to direct SU explicitly to overturn the student body’s vote, the University stressed the negative consequences of SU failing to fund EST and suggested that leaders that disagree with this procedure are disregarding student health. 

Let me be clear, all members of SU are concerned with student health, but it is the University’s charge, not SU’s, to ensure that all students are safe at WashU. If EST is the method by which this is done, that is great, but the University should then come to a more stable way for the organization to receive its funding. Either they should fund the organization, which they have made clear they will not do, or they should come to an agreement with SU through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) like SU does each year with other University departments like Student Affairs (which oversees Student Health Center, which in turn oversees EST), the Performing Arts Department (PAD), and others. SU officers, however, believe the latter suggestion would demonstrate SU’s inability to allocate the Student Activities Fee and jeopardize its collection of the fee. I reject this outright. Instead, it would demonstrate SU’s responsibility and commitment to finding a stable path forward to ensure student safety.   

Each of us, as officers or constituents of SU, has a role to play in the allocation of block funding. It is SU’s job to balance student organizations’ budgets, to oversee their petitions, and to host the election on which their funding is contingent. It is EST’s job to campaign for their organization. It is the student body’s job to vote, and to understand that failing to do so is also a choice that has consequences. What is clear to me is that it is certainly not SU’s job to engage in such apparent paternalism, suggesting that the student body doesn’t know what is in its best interest. I urge the Senate and Treasury to consider the dangerous precedent the Executive Council is asking them to set, and to reject it as such.