COLUMN: Following the Money

From Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '95 From Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '95It's been quite a year for the Student Activities Council. SAC started off 1995 by winning national attention for its disasterous handling of the controversy over the funding status of The Red and Blue. So SAC survived to deal with this fall's battle over the audit of the International Affairs Association. Whether deserved or not, everyone who went near this fiasco came away with mud on his face. At issue in the IAA battle was $1,500 in student funds. Now, suddenly, SAC is finishing off 1995 with an issue involving amounts of money several hundred times greater than that. The SAC Steering Committee will soon be proposing to restructure SAC on a grand scale. They have reached the conclusion that SAC in its current form fails to fulfill its basic objectives. Steering feels that SAC has become a procedural organization rather than a rational one. As Steering put together its proposal, it tried to examine all aspects of how SAC is organized and how student activity groups are funded. Most of what they found were difficulties familiar to anyone who has actively participated in a student group. But last week, as it completed its work, Steering discovered something rather starling. Throughout the year, student groups raise their own revenues to supplement what SAC gives them. This money is deposited through the Office of Student Life, which administers all student funds. At the end of each year, groups that wish to retain the money that they have raised and have it carry over into the next year must fill out a form for the OSL. The trouble is that most groups don't know about the form. If a group doesn't fill out the form, the money is confiscated. Many groups are not even aware that the money is disappearing. But it is disappearing. The money is supposed to belong to student activity groups. Where does it go? It appears that the money goes into a fund which pays off the debts of the other branches of student government, primarily SPEC and the class boards. We're talking about a lot of money. On Sunday night SAC Chairman Graham Robinson estimated that the fund contained nearly $300,000. It seemed incomprehensible that so much money that was supposed to be spent on student activity groups was being used to finance deficit spending by student government, so some reporting was in order. Yesterday morning, the director of OSL, Fran Walker, questioned the $300,000 figure. She said it was probably only $30,000 to $40,000, but she didn't know for certain. Lynn Moller, OSL's financial administrator, would know the exact number, she said. Moller revealed that, sure enough, Walker was correct about the inaccuracy of the $300,000 figure. The correct amount of money that sits unused in this fund: $473,000. The explanation for why Walker and Moller contradicted each other is apparently that OSL accounting has become so confusing and complex that it is difficult for anyone to follow. Moller was unable to explain how all of this money had ended up in the fund, and she doesn't know how the balance was arrived at. Ten years ago, she said, she attempted to get an explanation from the University budget office, but she got nowhere. OSL seems to be a Bermuda Triangle of student money. Understaffed and overworked, Moller barely has time for her day to day responsibilities, let alone to sort out the implications of the University's creative accounting. Everyone -- assorted members of SAC Finance, group treasurers, Robinson, Walker, Moller -- has a different explanation for precisely what has gone on. Some things, however, are clear. SPEC and the class boards are using SAC money to pay their debts, and no one has any authority to regulate this. When a SAC group has debts and the University pays them, SAC Finance must approve the transaction. But when Spring Fling runs over budget or the Senior Formal doesn't pay for itself, SAC groups make up the difference automatically. The Senior Class Board spends beyond its means every year, and lately SPEC has also gone far over budget, according to Moller. Walker says that when activity groups don't fill out the forms, members of Finance call them and ask them whether they want their money to be carried over into the following year. However, yesterday, current and former members of the committee agreed that this never happens. No such calls are made. Robinson points out that if there is so much SAC money in the newly discovered fund, many different groups' revenues must have been confiscated. Obviously this goes on without the groups' knowledge. Imagine a member of Finance calling a group treasurer and asking, "Um, would your group like to keep the $500 that your group raised, or would you like us to put it in a University fund so that SPEC can pay for its Comedy Jam?" There's not much doubt about the answer to that question. There are some students who knew about this fund before this week, but they thought it was only used to pay off the debts of SAC groups. No one, it seems, was aware that SPEC and the class boards were dipping into this fund. It is doubtful that SPEC or the class boards knew either. They just spent and spent and somehow all the red ink just went away. So for years, money raised by SAC groups or granted to them has been accumulating. Now there is nearly half a million dollars -- almost as much SAC entire annual budget. It is just sitting there collecting dust and paying other people's bills. Robinson wants this to stop. "SAC should be able to appropriate to SAC groups the money that was rightfully theirs to begin with," he says. Indeed SAC will be able to have quite a good time with that money. Speakers will be brought to campus that previously were well out of the acceptable price range. Groups will be able to have programs that they have long dreamed of but could never afford. SAC will have the means to loosen its restrictive guidelines. Student life will become more vibrant. But this could have happened long ago. These years of self-denial have been unnecessary. The University simply needed to provide OSL with the resources to follow the trail of money. Moller believes there ought to be four people doing her job. Instead she has help from a part-timer and a work-study student. This year the SAC Steering Committee has bothered to look where no one has looked before. They have found half a million dollars that had been hidden by the University accounting system, and they only dealt with student government. Just think of how much of its billion dollar budget the University must leave in a vault somewhere, wasted or forgotten. Robinson is not interested in playing the blame game. "I'm not so concerned with assigning blame," he says, "as I am with seeing the situation corrected." Indeed, yesterday OSL officials were agreeing that it could be corrected. As a result, activity groups have much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. They just got a $473,000 gift.