Tim Mellman and Tanvi Gorre | Student Life

In the midst of Student Union (SU) Treasury’s diminishing Budgets and Appeals account, some student organizations have expressed concern about putting on student programming, while others feel that they will be able to continue their regular programming in the spring.

For some groups, SU’s current financial situation does not impact their funding for the rest of the year. SU has three tiers of recognition for SU-funded student organizations: CAT I, II, and III. Student organizations known as CAT I organizations make up 59.3% of all SU-funded student organizations — these organizations are the only SU-funded clubs that can appeal for money during the year to fund events. 

Noam Karger — junior and President of the Jewish Student Association (JSA) — said that SU’s financial situation caused JSA to be concerned about their programming this year.

“Our board started panicking a little bit,” Karger said. “It’s important to us to offer the programming that we promised our [community] members, and we felt like we weren’t going to be able to do that.”

According to Karger, large student events are vital to JSA’s mission as a student organization, and are typically funded through appeals.

“The portion of the community which attends those weekly events is a subset of it, and the bigger events are kind of a way in which we’re able to bring in a larger crowd, a more diverse crowd, and try to incorporate more people into the broader community,” Karger said.

This past year, Treasury allocated more money to student groups by increasing budgeting at the beginning of the year by approximately 20%; however, Karger said that this increase did not impact his club significantly.

“We try to keep most of our funding through appeals,” Karger said.

JSA recently made a $500 appeal to visit and get food from a local synagogue for Simchat Torah. However, due to a recently-instituted SU policy that clubs can only appeal for food once for each religious holiday, JSA had difficulty obtaining funds from SU. 

“[I]t was pretty stressful for us that we weren’t going to be able to provide that to our community,” Karger said.

While JSA was not funded for their food during Simchat Torah, they did receive funding to attend the Simchat Torah celebration at the local synagogue. 

Meris Damjanovic — junior and SU Vice President of Finance — said that JSA had already spent $3,270.00 for Simchat Torah Religious Meals, which is why Treasury could not fund JSA’s additional request for food.

“This cap was instituted as we noticed an increase in food-event requests for each individual holiday,” Damjanovic said. “This cap was first applied to Chabad. Chabad is currently the fifth-most-funded student group. Hillel Leadership Council is the second-most-funded student group. We at SU are trying to ensure that the activities fee is being allocated equitably.”

Justin Xu — senior and Pickleball Club Co-President — was also initially concerned about SU’s depleting funds. Xu said that his club is reliant on appeals this year because they recently started a competitive branch, which last year’s Pickleball Club executives did not account for in their annual budget request to SU. But after communicating with SU financial leadership, he is confident about Pickleball Club’s financial standing.

“We started to make appeals for money as soon as we could, just in case the appeal does run out, and it seems like they are still really willing to support us,” Xu said.

SU financial leadership has asked student organizations to get their big appeals for the year out of the way now. However, Irene Herrmann — sophomore and Treasurer of Climbing Club — said that it is difficult to figure out the logistics of such events several months ahead of time. 

“I’d say it’s been difficult, because with the appeal process, you have to be pretty specific [and include] as much detail as possible,” Herrmann said. “[A] lot of those details, you don’t necessarily know until close to the event.”

Julia Prata — junior and Treasurer of Running Club — said that SU’s monetary status has not worried her club. This year, Running Club was able to secure $12,000 and $2,000 in appeals requests to attend Go St. Louis Halloween and St. Louis Running Club racing, respectively.

Prata said SU’s financial leadership is working with clubs to remediate the financial situation and make SU’s operations more clear to student organizations.

“[Financial leadership is] specifically working with clubs to solve problems [and] work through reimbursements [and] expense reports, which has been helpful,” Prata said.

Embody WashU is a CAT II organization, and as a result, it is not impacted by the Budgets and Appeals account’s current balance. According to Blanca Velazco — Embody Co-President and senior — the club has more money to work with than it did last year.

“[This] semester, we were given a little bit more money in our operation,” Velazco said. “It wasn’t a huge amount, but to us, it was.”

Embody WashU is hoping to become a CAT I group next year. When Velazco was asked if it is worth applying to become a CAT I group given the state of the SU appeals budget, she said yes.

“[I]s it worth it?” Velazco said. “After seeing the way that things are being handled by the SU Treasury, I think there is a lot of hope.”