What would you do with $128,990?
Student Activities Council board members could give the money to help improve student groups- - if only they could get their hands back on it.
Each year, SAC, a branch of student government, is given $700,000 with which to fund and supervise about 200 students. But with 71 student groups owing $128,990 collectively, the Council has resorted to a new program to help manage its money.
The SAC Debt Reduction Initiative, proposed and passed by SAC last month, will help the Council work with accountable groups and devise specific plans to help pay off what each group's owes.
"This has been a growing problem, and we always knew it was a problem," SAC Treasurer and Wharton junior Eric Van Nostrand said. "We realized this was the year we needed to take action."
Van Nostrand said there are two types of debt that SAC faces: debt created when a group spends more than it makes in one year, and debt that has accumulated over at least 100 years but was never paid by the given group.
SAC targeted the 10 most indebted groups in each category - a total of 18, since two overlap - and liaisons will work with group leaders to devise formal fundraising plans for each group.
These plans will be presented at the SAC general body meeting on Dec. 4, when the 200-member body will vote on every proposal.
Debt reduction proposals that are passed will then be reevaluated at the end of the academic year.
Van Nostrand said groups owing money from last year will set a "quantitative goal," and those with accumulated debt will have a more abstract "landscape for fundraising."
Although Nostrand would not say which groups are in debt so as to not "humiliate" them, leaders from Mock Trial and the Korean Students Association said they were on the list.
"The accumulated debt has been on the books since before I was on the club," Mock Trial treasurer and Wharton senior Arpan Gautam said. "People made mistakes."
Korean Student Association treasurer and Wharton junior Jeffrey Lim said his group's debt was due to a mistake made several years ago when KSA did not request money from SAC to pay for a show at the Annenberg Center.
Lim said that this move left them $4,000 in debt, but that the debt issue was not the group's top priority as of yet.
"It sometimes feel like this debt issue is imposing on an organization a little too much," he said. "I definitely agree with the initiative, I just don't want to supersede the purpose of our organization with this debt issue."
But beyond individual groups, SAC is also concerned with the amount of debt that can add up across all groups.
"When certain groups accumulate debt, it restricts the funding that goes to other groups," Van Nostrand said.
"The SAC reserve fund is going to be at a point where there is nothing, so we need to nip this problem in the bud," he said.
