Report shows SAC finances in hot water

Student leaders are speaking out in response to the Student Activities Council temporary moratorium which prevents new student groups from receiving funding.

SAC, which funds 300 student groups on campus, voted on the moratorium Thursday in order to assess its financial situation.

Each year, SAC receives funding from the Undergraduate Assembly but also draws from a reserve fund which is crucial to the health of its finances.

SAC’s annual budget allocations reveal that the council overallocated its budget from the UA by $169,992 for the 2010-2011 academic year with the intention of covering it through the reserve fund, which currently stands at $103,837.

The budget report was submitted to The Daily Pennsylvanian by a member of a SAC-funded group who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the subject.

According to College senior and former SAC chairwoman Ali Huberlie, the reserve fund consists of unspent funds from SAC-funded student groups and the other five branches of Penn Student Government at the end of every year.

Figures from the Office of Student Affairs show that SAC’s reserve fund remained above $400,000 between 2006 and 2008. However, in 2009, this amount decreased to $208,077, and dropped further to $103,837 in 2010.

The fund is typically drawn from twice each spring if SAC has overallocated its funds to student groups or overspent its contingency funds for emergencies with contracted speakers or instructors.

Rodney Robinson, the Office of Student Affairs’ adviser to SAC, believes the dramatic dip in the reserve funds in recent years reflects the poor health of SAC’s finances.

Huberlie said she first became aware of the dip in SAC’s reserve fund last summer.

“During my term, we certainly took from the reserve fund,” she said. “I was aware that there was a problem, but my board was turning over. I knew it was a conversation we’d be having [with Robinson].”

However, it was not until the end of last semester that SAC began discussing its precarious financial situation, according to Wharton junior and SAC vice chairman David Nadle.

College junior and SAC chairman Vinay Rao cited the $100,000 reserve fund as “the red flag” that led to the moratorium.

Nadle, however, said SAC did not have “a specific number” in mind. “We were continuing to dip lower and there was a kind of an end in sight,” he said with respect to the moratorium.

Rao attributed the significant drop in reserve funds in 2009 to the Sports Club Council’s increased financial reliance on SAC for funding to go to national tournaments and a rise in the number of new student publications that required funding.

College senior and former UA chairman Alec Webley — a DP columnist — criticized SAC’s funding guidelines that were put in place in 2008 for being too generous in allocating funds to student groups.

The guidelines raised funding for travel expenses and publications. “I trusted SAC, I trusted all the other officers and I trusted the process. I trusted that they knew what was going on,” he said, looking back on his days as a UA member in 2008.

Webley also regrets not being more critical of the readily-used reserve fund.

“When the OSA staff told us that the reserve fund … went up and went down and worked itself out in the end, we should have been more critical,” he said.

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