Leaders tackle $100K of club debt

In 2001, the president of the Penn Outdoors club sprang for a couple of extra buses.

Five years later, the student organization is still struggling to pay back the debts that president racked up.

Repeat this scenario 60 times, and you'll have an idea of the problems facing the Student Activities Council, which funds and supervises a wide range of student organizations.

SAC is responsible for student-organization spending that exceeds budgets; it is currently up to SAC to find the $100,000 needed to pay back all these debts.

But SAC officials say they're not letting club leaders run up huge bills anymore.

Each year, SAC receives about $700,000 from the Undergraduate Assembly to allocate to SAC-approved student organizations, according to UA Treasurer and College junior Sunny Patel.

About 30 percent of that money goes into the SAC reserve. The rest is distributed among the 250 SAC-funded groups on campus.

But over the past three years, that reserve has been shrinking as groups sink deeper into debt.

"Most purchases [by groups] are reimbursements or direct purchases from companies," Liang said.

When the total of these purchases surpasses the group's budget, SAC is forced to reach into their reserve to pay back the money, SAC Chairwoman and College junior Shirley Liang said.

Until now, once SAC paid off each group's expenditures, little was done to penalize groups who ignored their budgets.

But, as of this semester, SAC has decided to take a harder line toward those groups.

"We'll try to work out a plan so that these groups can supplement the reserve by paying back debt," Liang said.

SAC Executive Board members have begun meeting with groups that are deep in the red.

In these meetings, group leaders discuss possible fundraisers and alumni donations as means of getting more money, Liang said.

But according to some group leaders, SAC is part of the debt problem.

Penn Outdoors President and College senior Sebastian Tonkin finds fault with both SAC and its new initiative.

"As the president, I am responsible," Tonkin said. "But, basically, we have one of the largest debts because a couple of people who used to be in charge were financially irresponsible."

Tonkin noted that SAC does not periodically check to see if a group is charging unnecessary items, like excessive transportation, which could open the door to budget abuse.

He estimated that Penn Outdoors' debt is "multiple times [its] yearly budget."

Still, some say that student groups don't need SAC to keep their spending in check.

Rodney Robinson - the Penn associate director of student life, as well as a SAC adviser - pointed to the Web site Sacfunded.net, which allows organizations to track their spending. It remains to be seen whether group leaders are actually using the Web site, though.

SAC "shouldn't let these things spiral out of control," Tonkin said. "If we could raise that money ourselves, what would we need SAC for?"

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.