Jen Chaquette & Abe Sutton | Six months later: the SAC moratorium

It’s been about six months since the Student Activities Council general body approved SAC Executive’s recommendation to enact a moratorium on new student groups. Since that vote, which was overwhelmingly in favor of the moratorium, many other leaders on campus — including the new Undergraduate Assembly president and vice president — have voiced their support for the moratorium. Since any change in SAC policy reverberates throughout campus, we just wanted to give you, the student body, an update and set the record straight on the moratorium once and for all.

So, here we go: The decision to enact a moratorium in October 2012 was prompted mainly by costs rising faster than both SAC’s allocation from the UA (averaging 5 percent) and the UA’s allocation from the Trustees (averaging 3 percent) — especially facilities and travel costs — and also by accumulated student group debt.

The problem of group debt was an issue that SAC Exec was able to tackle head on, and after working diligently over the past six months to create a culture of responsible group spending, the majority of group debt has been repaid. Our new debt policy, intended to be a deterrence mechanism, enacts harsher penalties on groups that do overspend, and a new administrative alert system notifies us immediately when groups go into debt, allowing SAC Exec greater oversight of group expenses.

The other part of the equation — rising costs — is more complex. Facilities costs are controlled by the University, and SAC is “billed” for them at the end of each academic year. As Melissa Roberts’ and Jake Shuster’s October 2012 op-ed “The math behind the moratorium” reported, facilities costs have historically grown at a rate of 15 percent per year for the last five years, while SAC’s allocation from the UA has historically grown at 5 percent, a substantially larger increase than other branches of student government, due to those rising costs. As Roberts and Shuster explained, that math doesn’t quite add up.

About six or seven years ago, SAC Exec managed a “Reserve Fund” that helped to cover expenses that were either unanticipated or over our annual budget, such as rising facilities costs. In 2012, SAC Exec decided it was no longer financially responsible to compensate for rising costs by depleting the Reserve Fund and worked hard in the 2013-2014 budget cycle to take real expenses, including those rising facilities costs, into account. We decided balancing our budget was our number one priority while recognizing that not all groups would be happy with the financial constraints our fiscal reforms would pose.

For the 2013-2014 academic year, SAC is expected to receive $1,065,790 — a 6 percent, or $60,000 increase, from 2012-2013 — from the Undergraduate Assembly. One hundred percent of SAC’s increase in funds will be directed toward facilities costs, which are expected to comprise over 30 percent, or $320,000, of SAC’s budget next year. The remainder of that $1,065,790 allocation is divided into $12,000 in administrative costs, $160,000 in SAC contingency funding and somewhere in the ballpark of $560,000 in SAC group budgets, pending appeals at the April SAC general body meeting.

Obviously, that increase in facilities costs, which is controlled by the University, means cuts elsewhere, and we thank all SAC groups for their diligent work in requesting only those funds that fulfill their primary mission while we balance our budget and work on the facilities issue. SAC Exec would also like to thank all Performing Arts Council groups for agreeing to contribute 20 percent of their ticket revenue to defray facilities costs in the upcoming academic year.

Moving forward, SAC Exec and the UA are committed to working together with University administrators to address the issue of rising costs. We hope to focus on a number of topics, including: 1) more drastic price discrimination for student groups at venues such as Irvine Auditorium, the Penn Museum and Annenberg Center; 2) additional free spaces on campus; 3) a greater overall allocation to the UA to help fund student activities in light of rising costs and 4) offering travel services that identify affordable options for student group travel. We’re optimistic that these conversations are moving in the right direction, and we recognize the importance of our acting now in order to fund group activities, resolve the moratorium and improve student life at Penn in the future.

If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, we would love to hear your thoughts.

Jen Chaquette and Abe Sutton are juniors in the College and the College and Wharton, respectively. Chaquette is the Student Activities Council chair and Sutton is the Undergraduate Assembly president. They can be reached at sac@sacfunded.net and president@pennua.org.

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