We all have to watch our spending as students but it turns out that the SGA puts even more thought into their budgets than we do! Staff Writer Liv Nelson reports.

Once again, Bwog joined the SGA in Diana’s second floor dining hall (yes, the one complete with scarily high ceiling and all.) The number of attendees were sparse—maybe because the topic of finance is quite a dry one—yet the VP Finance Rachel Nordlicht charged through a chunky PowerPoint with the enthusiasm of a possible Econ major.

In order to avoid getting too convoluted, let’s break down the bare necessities from the meeting:

  1. The SGA budget is both internal (addressing Class Councils etc) and external (addressing Bacchanal etc);
  2. This year’s total budget of $428,475 was considered “less than ideal” and has motivated a new course of action within the SGA:
    1. A decrease in unnecessary funding;
    2. A limit to Community Impact funding;
    3. An increase to Bacchanal’s funding by $8,000;
    4. An increase in senior class council funding.

At this point, a couple of representatives from the Bacchanal Governing Board (BGB) stood up and took the floor from Rachel. They stated that Bacchanal has historically been “chronically underfunded” and subsequently wanted to draw attention to some of the concerns the BGB had discussed after Bacc 2019. These spanned from…

…Approved artists wanting payment upfront (a difficult task to fulfill, considering all four undergrad councils must agree on how to move forward with budget decisions, thus potentially jeopardizing the booking of acts who will seek more instant payment from other Ivies);

…The issues of discretion regarding social media (negative comments and posts prior to the artist’s arrival at Columbia has the ability to derail the contract and acts may drop out as close to a day before Bacchanal!);

And finally! There was a motion to vote on the BGB’s possible $8,000 increase in funding from the SGA. Unfortunately, the vote did not occur for some unknown reason and so the session disbanded amicably. All in all, it was a pleasant surprise to see how official the whole system was but the discussion was undeniably heavy for a Monday evening. A large Diana smoothie was required shortly afterwards.

Moolah via Bwog Archive