Ella Giere | Student Life

Student Union unanimously passed a $4.2 million general budget on March 26 for the 2023-2024 academic year, an increase by 5% from this year’s $4 million budget.

The budget will be divided between four primary categories: school councils, block funding, Student Union operating, and student group funding. 

Max Roitblat, the Vice President of Finance for SU, began the annual general budget meeting with a description of rules and decorum and expressed desire for a succinct meeting.

“I want today to be as efficient as possible,” said Roitblat in his opening remarks. “What that means to me is that we don’t need to arbitrarily extend today just for the purpose of talking and showing that we’re talking.”

To streamline the meeting, Q&A sessions were hosted for each fiscal section, as compared to announcement and discussion for every line-item cost, of which there were 80.

“We have the whole planning phase to allocate $4.2 million, not necessarily to get too much into the weeds on every single individual line item,” Roitblat added. “The word of the day is compromise.”

The joint session between the Senate and Treasury lasted 1 hour and fifteen minutes, vastly shorter compared to previous years’ sessions which sometimes went on for several hours or days. 

SU began the session with “immovable costs,” that go towards SU operations, including staff salaries, website expenses, etc. The most prominent immovable cost in the budget was Student Affairs, which received $800,000. 

The Social Programming Board was allocated $423,220 during the meeting. $325,000 is designated towards contracting performers for events including WILD, comedy events, and the Trending Topics speaker series. 

SU allocated $35,000 for the Fall 2023 WILD, and $160,000 for Spring 2024, indicating that the Spring event will be the larger of the two. Roitblat said that Fall 2023’s WILD will likely be held off-campus. 

“The difference between this fall WILD and WILD’s you may have seen in the past is that they’re planning to host it at the Pageant on the Loop rather than on campus,” Roitblat said. 

Beginning with Spring 2024’s WILD and moving forward, the event is scheduled to take place on Mudd Field, “for as long as possible,” according to Roitblat. 

SU ended the session with discussion of block funding. Emergency Support Team (EST), Uncle Joe’s Peer Counseling, and Campus Y elected to attempt to receive block funding this year. Block funded groups are guaranteed the full extent of their requested funds given that they gain the signatures of 15% of the study body.

Although block funding is part of the SU general budget, Roitblat noted that SU does not have the direct ability to approve block funding allocations.  

“This is an immovable that we don’t have the ability to vote on because of our constitutional procedure for block funding,” Roitblat said. “SU as a general organization has no purview over [block funding]. We take the request for their budget and disseminate them to the student body. The groups are really in charge from there.” 

All three organizations were successful in achieving the number of signatures required to qualify for this method of funding and received the full amounts requested. EST received $55,258.99, Uncle Joe’s received $21,565, and Campus Y received $43,155.

SU moved to do a single vote on all budget items, which passed unanimously with no abstentions.