Swarthmore’s Student Budgeting Committee (SBC) is preparing for the Spring 2025 semester. SBC is the student-run committee responsible for distributing the school’s student activity fund to the various clubs across campus. The Phoenix spoke with SBC Chair Tenzin Bawa ’27 to gain a clearer understanding of the SBC budgeting process, a review of this fall’s budgeting, and what to expect in the upcoming spring allocation hearings.
For those curious about how SBC and college club funding works in general, here’s a brief overview: Along with tuition, students are charged a “Student Activities Fee” as part of their cost of attendance each semester. This fee contributes to the Student Activities Fund, which totals around $700,000 for each academic year. SBC is then responsible for allocating this money to the student clubs. Club leaders are invited to allocation meetings hosted by SBC, where they present their proposed budgets to the committee. Afterwards, the committee votes and decides final semesterly allocations and budgets as a group before issuing them to club leaders.
Bawa said the budgeting process for the Fall 2024 semester went smoothly, with the committee able to distribute allocations relatively early in the semester. He highlighted the positive reception of a new dashboard feature which allows club leaders to see how much funding is allocated to different groups and adds a layer of transparency to the budgeting process. However, it was also underscored that the committee received the usual feedback from clubs expressing dissatisfaction with the amount of funding received. Bawa explained this is an ongoing challenge, as clubs collectively request close to a million dollars each year, far exceeding the available funds.
Regarding ongoing spring hearings, Bawa mentioned that SBC is working to extend its deadlines and continue the hearings through the week of Nov. 18. The goal is to complete the hearings by Thanksgiving, allowing clubs more time and flexibility in finalizing their budgets. Other than complications with Google Forms, the spring budgeting process has gone relatively smoothly.
As a result of frequently needing to reduce club budget requests, SBC is not always the most popular group on campus. When asked whether there were any misconceptions about SBC or things people should know, Bawa emphasized that SBC is open to feedback and values open communication. “Although we’d like to sponsor as much student activity as possible, it’s challenging as we don’t always have the capacity to do so. We always encourage clubs to reach out to us with any questions and not to see any decision or email that we send as final, but as part of an ongoing conversation. Club funding is a process that’s kind of fluid. It doesn’t really end, so we want people to continue reaching out and we think keeping good communication is really key for all of that.”
