Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
SBC met on Sunday at 5:05 p.m. A total of five groups requested their services.
Model United Nations
The first group to approach the committee was the Model United Nations. They requested a total of $630.00 to send six members to a conference at the New York University. The funds would be used to pay the registration fee. Full funding was proposed and passed unanimously.
During a short intermission between groups the SBC discussed preparations for meetings in lieu of Spring Budgeting. This is when all chartered groups on campus plan out their budgets for the next year. It is imperative that groups attend this event for if they don’t they will receive a 50% cut automatically on any proposals for funding from the SBC in the future until such time that they do produce an approved budget by the SBC itself. Plans were made to host preliminary draft meetings with the treasurers of chartered groups to ensure that all groups have correctly formatted budgets that can be refined, when they submit their 2016-2017 budgets on April 11. There were also plans to possibly send out a sample budget for groups to use in preparation.
Good Food
The next group was Good Food, which requested a total of $716.86 for new beekeeping boxes. The group needed a total of four. Each new box, or “super,” has ten frames. The conditions of the current supers are poor. Fixing them would prevent a potential campus wide bee swarm seeking a new abode. The group also requested a transfer of funding. After careful analysis of the proposal, and a brief discussion on the art of beekeeping, full funding was proposed and approved unanimously.
Swarthmore Democrats
The third group was the Swarthmore Democrats. The group had a surplus of funds in transportation due to the fact that a planned conference last year got moved from New York to the University of Pennsylvania, meaning the Dems did not have to use the funds given the proximity of the University of Pennsylvania to Swarthmore. The group also decided to cancel a lobbying trip and lobby on campus, which saves money. Because of these changes the transportation budget remained untouched so a transfer of the funds was requested. $200 from the transportation budget would be moved to both “all campus” and “group” activities categories. Specifically, $150 would be used for all-campus and $50 for the group. There was some confusion on food spending so the group agreed to not vote and convene again next week when the confusion was clarified by an updated proposal.
Ultimate Frisbee
Men’s Ultimate Frisbee proposed next and requested a transfer of $475.00 worth of funds to attend a meet. The full transfer was accepted unanimously. Women’s Ultimate requested $1,432.00 in the form of a reimbursement; however, SBC did not fund retroactively, as requests are supposed to be made before hand. A transfer of funds from services was therefore proposed instead. $1,730 is currently in their registration as the end of February. The votes on transfer will take place next week. It was noted that for future reference emergency funds can be requested on short notice via email. No vote was taken.
180 Degrees Consulting
The final group to approach the table was 180 Degrees Consulting. They are a newly chartered non-profit consulting group. Since they are newly chartered they missed spring budgeting by no fault of their own but negotiations still ensued. The non-profit group requested a total of $2398.68. The funds would be used for a variety of purposes such as a Summit taking place between April 15 and 17 ($421.68). Delegates will be sent at a cost of $45 each on the MegaBus. Funding for Amtrak was proposed as a possible alternative but failed. The requested funds would also be used to send six delegates to a three-day summit in DC ($1319.00) and then four delegates to an event at Harvard for a day ($658.00). The SBC discussed whether or not they wanted to fund three campus events for two months. They noted that they are a “last resource” funding group so the consulting group should seek out alternative methods of funding first.
Suggestions were made to approach the Dean’s Office for an amount of $400 and to ask CIL to sponsor the conference funding. Other revisions were suggested to cut the costs of the budget. The SBC took time to research alternative deals and suggested some revisions to 180 Degrees’ Airbnb booking method to secure a cheaper price. A suggestion was also made to “bus” the Harvard event and come back the same day to cut housing costs. Uber was also cut out of the budget as it was deemed too expensive. The group will re-apply with a revised budget next week.
