After homecoming, Student Senate quickly shifted their gears from planning the dance to focusing on club grants. With 16 clubs asking for money between $0-500, but only $3000 to give in total, tough decisions had to be made.
“What we did this year and what we’ve been doing for the past few years is Mr. Tygrett will send out a Google Form to all the administrators of clubs. Then the administrator can fill out the Google Form requesting a certain amount of money. Each year, students and I will put a cap on how much they can request based on our budget. Then the administrator can request up to the cap off,” Margalit Frank ‘24 said.
As the treasurer of Student Senate, Frank is in charge of the budget, expenses, and profits of the student organization.
“My job was to meet with Mr. Tygrett, [and] (Student Senate Co-Presidents) Rose and Lulu, and look over the amount of money that we have in the Student Senate bank account. Look over all of the finances of the past couple of years and then plan out our future expenses for the year,” Frank said.
This year, Student Senate only gave out $3000 for clubs which is on the lower side. However, Student Senate plans on doing a second round of club grants in the spring, keeping the total cost at $6000.
“[We look at things like] how much it costs to rent The Graduate for prom, how much food costs for prom, how much the senior picnic is going to cost? And take those out and see what we have left,” Frank said. “That also gives us a good cushion if anything were to go wrong or if we weren’t going to profit from something. We figure out what would be the best way we can give out the most money without being too risky financially.”
Student Senate decides on which clubs will get money and how much each club will get by reading out the club’s request, seeing what they will use the funds for, discussing, and then voting.
“The process is probably the biggest debate that we get into throughout the whole year,” Frank said. “We read each request and what they’re going to use the money for. Then people in Student Senate can vote. We go back and rank which ones we feel are more important, will be the most impactful, and help the most students.”
Despite this way of distributing club grants being effective, it isn’t without its flaws and problems.
“There’s definitely bias involved [in voting]. This is how we’ve been doing it for a really long time, so I don’t know what it might look like to change that up. I don’t think it’s totally fair. When there’s overlap of some kids that are in these clubs and then voting to give themselves money,” Frank said.
This process has been used for a long time over the many years of Student Senate, so a sudden switch would be hard. While some students may find this process unfair, others find it understandable.
“Given the resources that Student Senate has, I think that’s fair. Basing it on how important it is and what it would do for the club. With their limited funds, I think that’s a fair way of doing it,” Kaden Huntley ‘25 said.
Huntley is the founder of the Astronomy Club. Small clubs like Astronomy Club greatly benefit from the club grants that Student Senate gives out.
“We’re trying to save up and buy a high-tech telescope. Currently one of our members owns [a telescope] but it takes about 90% of the time looking through the telescope just fiddling around with the settings locking on a planet or a moon. If we got an electronic one, we could do that in 10 seconds,” Huntley said.
Club members, sponsors, and leaders take advantage of the opportunity to get money from Student Senate to help grow and strengthen their club.
“I’d definitely say [that club grants are important]. Especially because we’re a pretty small club. We only have five or so members. For small clubs, [club grants] are really important because last year, we needed to fund some small things for our project that year, and we couldn’t have done it without the club grants that Student Senate gives,” Huntley said.
The way that club grants help clubs is different depending on the club. Each club spends its money differently, but the money is always appreciated.
“The Student Senate grants are very helpful because they give a few $100 which really allows us to buy smaller things when we need them and not have to worry about spending a few months getting money for smaller things. In terms of bigger things, it’s not normally enough money, but it’s very helpful to always have backup money,” Huntley said.
Frank, Mr. Tygrett, and the school’s co-presidents did the calculations and saw that they were able to give each of the 16 clubs between $75-100 to evenly split the money between each club. Nonetheless, they decided that wasn’t the best way to spend their money. Instead, they decided to give more money to the clubs that truly needed more money.
“I always feel bad because we’re not always giving [clubs] money. I think last year we had a really good experience with club grants even though we were really low on money. Last year, our cap was at $300. At the beginning of the year, we didn’t have any money to give out so last year Student Senate started the first annual Winter Carnival, which is purely just to raise money to give to clubs. So we’re doing that again this year so that we can hopefully do a second round of club grants and fulfill more requests that we weren’t able to fill the first time around,” Frank said.
To make the process of giving out club grants more fair, student and club member participation is needed.
“Sometimes [students in clubs] have their friends come to Student Senate to vote, even if they don’t come to Student Senate that often. But it’s not accessible to every person to be able to come to those morning meetings, but Student Senate is open to everybody,” Frank said.
