The Student Senate approved a recommended budget for student fees allocations, making cuts to several student services and scholarship funds at its Wednesday evening meeting, which spanned into the early hours of Thursday. 

Despite over an hour of debate, the only changes ultimately made to the recommended budget were to fix a clerical error, moving money mistakenly allocated to the Office of Student Engagement and Belonging into a reserve fund — and to change a condition which would have swept $16,700 from the Office of Student Accommodations and Testing.

The total funds requested, across all 33 budget items, was more than $10.6 million. A total of about $10 million was available for the budget. The cuts totaled $556,071.

In a typical year, only some of the entities would be included in the budget, and would maintain that funding for two years in a year A, year B cycle. However, because of a budget shortfall last year, all items l were up for consideration. This was done to prevent some items from operating on reduced shortfall funding, while others would receive funding unaffected by the shortfall. Next year, the process will return to its typical cycle. 

Six items were fully cut from the budget: debate scholarships, esports scholarships, Varsity Esports, Disability Support Services scholarships, Student Outreach Services, and the Office of Student Accommodations and Testing. 

Seven items received partial cuts: first-generation student scholarships, non-traditional student scholarships, Student Health Services, Counseling and Psychological Services, HOPE Services, Campus Recreation and the Student Government Association office expenditures. 

Several of the items cut have other funding sources, such as grants, partnerships or administrative funding. 

First-generation student scholarships requested $50,000, and the senate approved $40,000. 

Non-traditional student scholarships requested $30,000 and were approved for $25,000 with a stipulation that the scholarship requirements be updated to comply with SGA bylaws enacted in February. 

The bylaw section in question, Student Senate Bill 68-144, states, “No scholarship applicant will be excluded from consideration, and no scholarship recipient will be chosen on the basis of age, ancestry, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origin, political affiliation, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or status as a veteran.” 

Student Health Services requested $1,166,462, and the senate approved $1,116,462. 

CAPS requested $548,084, and the senate approved $445,084.

HOPE Services requested $31,484 and was approved for $10,000. 

Campus Recreation requested $1,134,834, and the senate approved $1,013,690.

The SGA office expenditures item request was $2,400,965 and the senate approved $2,376,715. 

The senate also voted to forego a second read on the budget. Typically, the student fees budget is read three times in senate. This change means that the senate may not make any more changes to the budget allocations in its next meeting, but can change the provisos, or conditions, placed on any items. 

Representatives of several of the items that received cuts contested their proposed cuts to the senate.

The Student Fees Commission finalized its recommended budget last week after three days of hearings and under four hours of deliberations. 

Several senators also attempted to make changes to the recommended budget to retain funding for some of the entities. However, those attempts were ultimately voted down by the senate. 

Debate scholarships

Assistant debate coach and graduate student Thomas Babcock advocated for the debate scholarship fund to be added back to the budget after the commission recommended $0.
“Those funds are used as scholarships for both undergraduate and graduate students on the debate team,” Babcock said. “Without those funds, we lose one of our strongest tools to continue to attract and retain some of the brightest talent in the nation.” 

During the commission’s deliberations, members expressed a lack of clarity about how the debate scholarships were awarded and that they supported a limited number of students. 

Babcock said that debate had preemptively created a scholarship committee to award the funds, should the senate decide to add money for debate back to the budget. 

Student Body Treasurer Luke Bumm also said that a reason for cutting funding was that the fund had received money from the university foundation through outside donations. 

“The message being sent to our donors is that their contributions are essentially meaningless,” Babcock said.
The Office of Student Accommodations and Testing

The Student Fees Commission recommended cutting OSAT’s $10,000 request to $0 and to sweep its $16,700 pool of reserves due to discrepancies in the use of the funds. 

Altering the allocation to OSAT wasn’t disputed within the Student Senate, but the proviso to sweep its reserve was altered to allow it to keep that money, with the stipulation that OSAT provide a plan to spend the money. 

Assistant Vice President of Student Services Alicia Newell, who oversees OSAT and other areas of Student Affairs, spoke in public forum at Wednesday’s meeting to contest the $0 allocation and the proviso. Newell said the reserves were for a planned, multi-year contract with an assistive technology company to provide students with the technology through OSAT. 

“Allowing OSAT to retain these funds is critical because those resources were intentionally set aside to support these commitments and ensure continuity of services for students who rely on these tools,” Newell said. 

Director of OSAT Isabelle Medina-Keiser did not bring up the contract when presenting to the Student Fees Commission during OSAT’s hearing, nor was it mentioned at student fee hearings in the past two years. 

“From my knowledge, the live streams of the hearings provided no information on the contracts, and I would also like to mention that OSAT receives several other funding sources,” Underserved Sen. Grace Naylor said. “If they only used roughly $4,000 of the allocations in the last two years, what is it to show that they will use it now?” 

During deliberations on the student fees allocations, Underserved Commissioner Jia Wen Wang, who was the student body treasurer from 2023-25, stood strongly for sweeping OSAT’s reserves.

“For two fiscal years, the Office of Student Accommodations and Testing has lied to this commission,” Wang said. “They have lied to the 18,000 students we all represent, lied to our constituency about what they will be spending these funds for, and how they will be spending these funds. I don’t take lies like that from a student fee entity very lightly.” 

Campus Recreation and Shocker Rowing

Campus Recreation received a cut of about $121,000.

Shocker Rowing is managed and funded by Campus Recreation, getting around $200,000. But commissioners expressed that they did not think rowing should receive that much money.

Bumm said the cut consisted of the rowing team’s travel budget, a currently open coaching position — which head coach Calvin Cupp said the team had planned to fill in the next year — and half of its equipment and maintenance budget. 

The commission’s reasoning for this was, as Bumm said, “consistency with their decision to defund other specialized competitive teams, like debate and esports.” 

The senate’s next meeting is on March 25 at 7:30 p.m. in the Rhatigan Student Center, room 233. All senate meetings are live streamed on SGA’s YouTube channel. 

A recording of Wednesday night’s meeting is available here. 

Editor’s note: Thomas Babcock, the assistant debate coach, is also a member of the WSU Board of Publications, which oversees The Sunflower. The Sunflower aims to cover all parties involved in this story equitably. The board is not involved in the reporting, writing or editing process of any of The Sunflower’s work.