Club Budget Allocation: Reactions and Opinions

On Oct. 4, 2023, the All-Student Assembly took place in the Dr. Carl Djerassi Theater Hall at AUBG. It showcased the club budgets that all student clubs will receive throughout the 2023-24 academic year. The dissatisfaction many students had with the budget allocation presented by the Student Government was one of the most memorable moments during the assembly.  

The overall budget had been doubled compared to last year, which suggested that there would be an increase in every single club’s budget.  

Nonetheless, there were still many questions directed at the Student Government. Business Club president Yulvie Izet said: “Since there was a 100% increase in the budget, we expected that we will receive at least twice the money that we usually get.” 

Ethan Perelstein, a fourth-year student and member of More Honors, shared that he does not understand how any student can be unsatisfied with this year’s budget when there is more money than any club has ever had before.  

“Everyone has been operating very successfully on a budget smaller than this year,” he said. 

StartUP and the Business Club were among the clubs with the lowest increase in their budgets, with the main reason being that they receive additional money from a large number of sponsors.  

StartUP president Antonia Rusalieva said that this was not a valid argument and she also added that the club can never be certain how many sponsors it will have throughout the year.  

Perelstein shared that if a club can sustain themselves through sponsors, they should be allowed and challenged to do so, “especially if that club is something business-oriented where that’s part of their function to begin with.”  

The Student Government’s official guidelines regarding financial help, which they presented at the Student Assembly, state that “priority is given to clubs, which because of the nature of their activities, cannot find adequate outside donors.”  

According to Rusalieva, “there are no such excuses as ‘we are a club that cannot receive sponsors,’” and said that if someone is very diligent, they would be able to find a way.

Izet added that it is discrimination against the biggest clubs who try and invest so much more time to attract sponsors for their events than small clubs. 

“There’s a lot of competitive open marketplace clubs that are using this as practice to network in an open marketplace,” Perelstein said. He also said that the competition and difficulty of getting sponsors is not only helpful for the funding of their clubs but is also useful for the way they operate. 

The contribution that a club brings to the AUBG community is the criteria that Izet deemed as most important in her opinion when it comes to budget allocation. She said that “the Business Club has some really measurable successes in terms of positive contribution, not only to students but the whole organization [AUBG].” 

A week before the assembly, there was a student leadership meeting held between all clubs and organized by SG’s Budgetary and Allocations Committee. During the meeting, the budgets were discussed with the goal of resolving all concerns before the assembly and preventing major disputes during the assembly, which happened the previous year. 

Perelstein said that, going into the meeting, his job was to help people understand why More Honors receive the amount of money that they do. “Some of the arguments against are not founded in the criteria, nor are they founded in reality sometimes,” he said.  

For those questioning the amount of money More Honors receives, Perelstein broke it down to a few major factors. Those included how the club establishes culture within the community, the fact that they are not very sponsorable, and that they would not be able to do the practices they do if they had sponsors.  

Even with the many differences clubs can have between each other, Rusalieva said that all clubs and their work should be appreciated and that “the budget is in a way an appreciation of what you have done last year.”