By RUBY BAUDHUIN
A recent 12% budget cut for all clubs on the Beloit College campus has caused contention among students.
Jasmin Bowers‘25, the director of the Clubs and Organizations Oversight Committee, or COO, said that the 12% cut was a last resort. Yet some students feel it is merely the symptom of a much larger problem. “Knowing that there’s budget cuts but not knowing how bad it is, I’m like, ‘the world is crumbling!’” said Svea Jones’25, president of Outdoor Environmental Club, or OEC.
As of Spring 2024, representatives of existing clubs, known as “COO reps,” no longer partake in the process of ratifying and determining budgets for new clubs. OEC executives expressed concern about this shift towards representative democracy. “I personally trust BSG to make good decisions,” said Adam Sanders’26, OEC’s residential life coordinator, in reference to Beloit Student Government, “but it’s still a little alarming not having the choice.”
Sanders, along with fellow OEC executives Jones and Louis Bernard’26, agreed that BSG’s previous system of club ratification—which involved COO reps and BSG members voting by shouting “yay” or “nay”—had some serious flaws. Yet Bernard, who is the treasurer of OEC, would have preferred that BSG reform the process rather than remove it entirely. While he noted that the new process is probably more efficient, it is “at the expense of not being as collaborative a process as I or my fellow clubmates would prefer.”
Bowers said that in addition to the old process being time-consuming, the switch was largely due to BSG’s concern that COO reps would be biased against new clubs for fear that their own budgets would get diminished. Bernard seemed to disagree. “As with many things,” he said, “there should be a barrier to entry, especially if you are getting the extremely limited funds that the school can provide.”
An uptick in new clubs, however, is not the only reason for the lack of funding. According to Sandy Fordell, Beloit’s Director of Finance & Treasury, the overall budget allocated for clubs is based on Student Activity Fees, which are a basic charge for all full-time students. Student Activity Fees are given to BSG whose members then allocate funds across clubs. This means that there is a direct correlation between club budgets and the college’s enrollment and retention rates.
According to Bowers, allocating funds is no small feat. “It takes months for us to decide budgets,” she said. “It’s a really hard process to go through because obviously we want to give everyone what they need, but we can’t due to resources.” Bowers said that the 12% budget cut was the first of its kind. Previously, cuts were made inequitably rather than distributed evenly across clubs.
Marcus Studinski’26, the treasurer of Aardvark Authors, is generally satisfied with his club’s budget, though he admitted that it is not ideal. OEC and Aardvark Authors require a much smaller budget than clubs like The Round Table, Maker’s Lab, and BITE, who have been significantly more affected by this year’s cuts.
If there’s one thing that all parties can agree on, it’s that Beloit’s clubs are integral to student life on campus. “Our student clubs are a core and crucial part of a student experience here,” said Fordell, who herself is an alumnus of the college.
Yet with money increasingly being channeled into construction projects, athletics, and, in Bernard’s words, “disciplines that will produce high-income alumni,” it is difficult for students not to see budget cuts as evidence that Beloit does not care about its students. “It seems like a lot of the budget cuts have been student-life related and not so much academics,” said Sanders. “It’s been stuff that improved student life on campus like arts, humanities, P-Board, clubs.” They continued, “it seems like they’re desperately trying to improve the image of the college while removing the things that make it special.”
Featured Image: Vietnamese Student Association via Beloit College
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