Our friends at The College Street Journal released an article taking a look at the Student Government Association budget in an earlier issue. Because of the confines of being an economic journal, they limited their assessment and purely gave the facts. I would like to expand further on the facts that they presented and looking at those facts, it is apparent that the SGA budget is bloated with funding to groups that are not accessible to the majority of students, that is crowd funded by the mandatory student activity fee. Moving beyond finances, the general attitude towards race, ethnicity, and identity related student organizations presents the pinnacle of college liberal white savior behavior. I would like to make it clear that this is not a judgment on the groups that are receiving the money as I have no issue with their existence or their monetary claims, or the SGA members who composed it who I am sure mean well, but rather the long standing culture and precedent that college liberalism has come to be. All information here is publicly available and no rules were broken to receive it. This is an exercise in the democratic process and transparency that SGA desperately needs.
The SGA budget is rife with strange monetary allocations to groups one probably would not expect to be funded by SGA. The most abhorrent of the budget allocations though comes from that spent on what SGA calls multicultural student organizations (MSOs) and identity based organizations (IBOs). Of the $705,522 allocated to recognized student organizations (RSOs), $129,100 is allocated to these MSOs and IBOs. While that may seem small in comparison, the total RSO budget includes groups like CAB, Purple Key Society, Purple Patcher, and the Spring Break Immersion Program who have a higher function than what most would consider a club, putting on large events and high cost activities like the spring concert, 100 days ball, the yearbook, and subsidizing spring break trips. Without the $333,000 these groups receive, the RSO budget is only $372,522. Excluding the $15,000 Pride receives as the only IBO, 31% of the real RSO budget is dedicated to groups based on race and ethnicity yet, according to collegefactual.com, only 22% of Holy Cross students are students of color. While some may say that these numbers are close enough, it is also important to note that members of these clubs also get to enjoy the budgets of other clubs that are not based on personal characteristics, while students who are not of the specific minority groups do not.
The issue I have with the SGA budget is not with the existence of these groups, as I fundamentally believe that most clubs that are not outwardly hateful or obscene should have a space on campus, rather my issue arises with the allocation of funds to groups that are not accessible to the student body as a whole. While I understand that most of the events that these groups often use their money for are technically available for all students, students that are not members of these groups most often do not attend these events by MSO and IBO groups because they perceive these events as meant to be spaces for these minorities, and the respectful populace of Holy Cross students will most often respect that. Additionally, the language in the public space of these groups indicate that they are meant to foster community among the specific race or ethnicity, leading to non-minority students wanting to lend those groups their space. Members of these groups should be entitled to do with their time what they please, and that means that they can congregate with whatever groups of people they should desire, but other students should not be required to subsidize it with their student activity fee. Instead, the student activity fee should be lowered and students should have the opportunity to spend their own money where they wish. Events for MSO and IBO groups already often feature tickets which could instead be sold at a higher price, creating an incentive for these events to be more outwardly welcoming and better attended. The budget should ultimately reflect the student body.
The high budgets of these groups do not reflect poorly on the groups receiving them, as when given the option for more money, it is often smart to accept it, rather it showcases the white savior attitude that this campus and many others across the country clings on to. I have had the pleasure of serving in the SGA senate and have had first-hand experience in the mindset on display. I would like to make it very clear, those in SGA I have interacted with have been very nice and welcoming, and I am sure that they all mean well, nonetheless this attitude of the student body is present in the SGA. A common trope among SGA discussion is to talk about a mythical divide between SGA and the MSOs/IBOs, as if there is some great rift between them. From my experience, the MSOs/IBOs do not care about the SGA and the SGA desperately wants them to care. The guilt that the predominantly white campus and as an extension SGA suffers from is reflected in their willingness to give funds to events that most white students do not feel comfortable attending because they are marketed as students of color or LGBTQ events, even if they are accessible to all.
This attitude is further reflected in the SGA cabinet budget that allocates $24,500 to the Directors of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and a further $2,000 to the Director of Social Justice. The DEI budget is by far the most funded with the next highest being $15,000 for the Director of Community Relations with most of the other Cabinet budgets hovering around $2,000. The discrepancy shows an obsession with DEI initiatives and a need to correct injustice that is just not present on campus.
Other clubs it appears SGA is far stingier with their money. The new Chess Club, a club that was just approved last semester and which every student can feel welcome joining, has been very vocal on their social media that they were given only enough money for two chess sets at the cost of $50. Each club, in order to be recognized, has to present a list of fifteen potential members in order to be eligible for recognition. Two chess sets is only enough for four people and is a capital investment as it can be reused every year, unlike the plethora of events that are scheduled by MSOs and IBOs. Some could contend the dispersal of funds to club chess pointing out that RSOs, according to the SGA Bylaws, are not supposed to receive funding from the reserve board of more than $100 in their first year, yet this rule is rarely followed considering ProspHer, a new MSO dedicated to “Womxn of Color'' received a far greater amount yet was also only approved this last semester.
Fundamentally, the Holy Cross campus, represented through SGA, in an effort to fuel inclusivity to ease the liberal guilt they possess, obsess over the approval of multicultural groups and identity based organizations. The budget is a pure reflection of that, alienating those who are not a part of these groups, and using the student activity to disproportionately fund it. The solution is to not encourage a separation based on identity, fueling the rift with the money of the masses, but rather to bring students together, without the divides of identity. The obsession of identity fuels division.