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Syracuse University’s 68th Student Association session encountered an unexpected obstacle at the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year: after overallocating funds last year, SA would have to operate with a fraction of its expected advanced allocation reserve.

With $250,000 to allocate for the spring semester, Comptroller Alexis Leach and SA’s finance board faced several decisions as registered student organizations requested funding that totaled more than three times that amount. In the end, SA overallocated by about $100,000, tapping into the association’s rollover fund.

As the current assembly enters its second semester, Leach and SA President German Nolivos said the association has reorganized to ensure future financial stability through new projects such as the Lending Closet Initiative, a collection of commonly requested items for reuse between organizations.

Leach also said the association has increased the $211 SU student activity fee by $8, the full 4% rise permitted annually. She added that the fee hasn’t increased since 2020, despite steadily rising tuition rates throughout the period.

“Five years makes a big difference … the world pre-COVID was completely different than it is now,” Leach said. “With the state of the world and inflation, this is (going) to make a difference.”

While the increase is expected to help SA avoid future financial obstacles, Leach said the association is also working to allocate funds more sustainably and responsibly, particularly through the Lending Closet.

First introduced to the assembly by Nolivos and SA Vice President Reed Granger last September, the initiative provides RSOs with a space to borrow and return frequently requested items for future use by other groups. With the closet, SA will reduce semester allocation costs while implementing a more environmentally conscious system, Nolivos said.

Leach added that many allocation requests are for similar items and events, but many organizations often use the products for just one event before discarding them. One such popular item is a photo booth, which can cost over $1,000. Instead of allocating multiple large sums each time a group requests a booth, Leach said SA will buy one booth to lend out.

“This is a huge first step in making sure that we’re not throwing single-use plastics everywhere and making sure that every RSO can reuse the things that they have purchased so that there isn’t an excess of things, or shortages,” Granger said.

In the coming months, Granger said the association will continue stocking the closet and will regularly monitor requested items to ensure the necessary ones are available.

SA, along with SU’s Student Engagement team, has worked on the closet throughout the academic year and is in the final stages, Nolivos said. The initiative’s last hurdle is creating a catalog system for students to access the resources.

As part of the new system, Leach said she hopes communication between RSOs and the finance board will improve.

She said emailing important dates and information proved to be inefficient in many instances during the fall semester. To make the request system more digestible, Leach said she intends to shift communications about SA finances from email to social media.

Communication has been at the forefront of this administration’s agenda since its early campaign days. When Nolivos, Granger and Leach first announced their intention to run, they committed to increasing student engagement with SA.

Now halfway through his term, Nolivos said events such as Marcelo Hernandez’s stand-up performance and increased participation in weekly assembly meetings show their efforts are paying off. Nolivos also pointed to the spring election cycle and a proposed constitutional referendum, first introduced last spring as an opportunity to gauge his administration’s progress.

Former SA President William Treleor said last February the referendum would change the association’s impeachment proceedings, increase outreach to a wider range of student groups on campus and redistribute various responsibilities and positions, including a new representative from SUNY ESF’s Mighty Oak Student Assembly.

Under SA bylaws, 10% of the undergraduate population must vote in order for constitutional revisions to be made, a benchmark SA failed to meet last spring when proposing several changes to its system, including renaming the association to “Student Government Association.” Nolivos, a proponent of the changes, hopes more students will vote this spring.

“We want to ensure that the campus community knows that for changes to be made, their voice is important,” Nolivos said. “We can make these changes come to fruition.”

SA’s first assembly meeting of the spring semester is on Monday night.

Published on January 26, 2025 at 11:47 pm

Contact Duncan: digreen@syr.edu