The Student Government Association’s student fees budget, which partially funds various student services and some scholarships, is almost set in stone.
The Student Senate passed its initial allocations before spring break, cutting some entities from the budget and allocating amounts to the remaining ones. At its next meeting, on March 25, the senate is expected to revisit the budget. In its current state, the funding bill includes policy provisions that SGA leaders say are intended to increase transparency about how students’ money is spent.
While the amounts allocated are set, the senate can still alter or remove the policy provisos — conditions entities must follow to receive their funding — before voting on it one last time and sending it to the Student Body President for her signature.
All entities required to keep student fee funds separate, money transfers need approval
SGA’s Student Fees Commission proposed a policy that would make all student fee entities — the student services and scholarship funds that receive student fees — create a separate account for their student fee funds. The goal is to create more transparency around how the money is spent, Student Body Treasurer Luke Bumm said.
The Student Fees Commission, Bumm said at the March 11 senate meeting, “felt that it was difficult to accurately gain a picture of the entities’ financials.”
“When student fee dollars are being mixed into revenue streams, transferred across departments and being held in reserves, this does not give a sense of transparency to our students,” he said. “This policy aims to create more transparency and responsibility for our departments to handle their student dollars.
According to the note, SGA’s Central Office will create a report of entities’ cash balances funded in fiscal years 2025 and 2026.
Another proviso would restrict entities from transferring any student fee dollars without prior approval from SGA.
The Rhatigan Student Center, which will get nearly $2.6 million in student fees next year, is exempt from this policy section. Bumm said that was a recommendation from SGA’s adviser, Gabriel Fonseca.
“My understanding is that the reason they exempted the RSC was because the RSC does not have a state fund like the other entities do,” Fonseca wrote in an email to The Sunflower. “SGA has 9 members who they appoint to sit on the Board of Directors for the Rhatigan Student Center, and they have access to the records that they need to see and ensure compliance with the rest of the policies.”
Scholarship for non-traditional students must change its criteria
The Non-traditional Scholarship, which in the past has been for students who are 24 or older and have financial need, has to change its requirements, according to a budget provision from last year. With the provision, SGA changed its rules to bar scholarship allocations based on factors like race, gender and age.
Student Senate Bill 68-144, which passed last year, 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.”
Sheelu Surrender, WSU’s assistant vice provost for Financial Aid and Scholarships, wrote in an email to The Sunflower on March 13 that her office is working with SGA to get “clarification on changes that need to be made” to the fund.
“Our goal is to create more scholarship opportunities for students, especially those with limited resources to attend college,” Surrender wrote. “We will learn more once we have a chance to connect with SGA.”
Student Health Services must pay back SGA
A policy note directs Student Health Services to refund $75,000 to SGA that it received over the summer. The money came out of SGA’s Student Fee Contingency Account.
Fonseca confirmed that SGA offered the money to Student Health Services because it was clear that the department could not absorb last year’s shortfall through its revenue.
Jessica Provines, WSU’s chief psychologist and assistant vice president for wellness, told the senate that Student Health Services was uniquely affected by the shortfall because much of its revenue comes from international students, and international enrollment at WSU has dropped.
Provines asked the senate to allow Student Health Services to keep the funds.
She said that returning the $75,000 would “impact the amount of care that (Student Health Services can provide” and “increase potential costs to students and reduce the opportunity for applied learning.”
According to the policy rider, the department would have until August 1 to refund the money.
No cost to students for psychological counseling appointments
Student senators expressed mixed opinions on a measure to eliminate the $10 charge for students to visit Counseling and Psychological Services. But at the March 11 senate meeting, attempts to keep the charge, or even reduce it rather than eliminating it, failed to secure a majority vote.
CAPS Director Christopher Leonard said that removing CAPS’s ability to charge a fee would result in a loss of around $57,000, based on annual revenue from past years, which could lead to staff cuts.
Outside of SGA, CAPS also receives money from the state. The legislature must finalize its budget before the legislative session is expected to end on April 10. The state funding CAPS will receive next fiscal, which Leonard said will factor into a possible staff reduction, isn’t known.
During the Student Fees Commission’s deliberations, Underserved Commissioner Jia Wen Wang, who is also the Student Body President, said she had heard from some students that the charge to use CAPS was “off-putting to them,” and didn’t know that they could receive counseling for free or a reduced cost.
CAPS will reduce or eliminate the $10 charge if students think they cannot afford it. Leonard told The Sunflower that this applies to around 10-15% of students who use CAPS.
“We will never turn away somebody,” he said. “We don’t want financial situations ever being a barrier.”
He said that reducing staff would likely result in longer wait times for students and fewer applied learning positions because student employees must receive supervision from licensed staff.
CAPS’ wait times currently average 6.8 days, including weekends, while schools the size of WSU average 9.7 days for psychological services, Leonard said.
He compared the impact to traffic lanes.
“Whenever you remove lanes of traffic, it starts bottlenecking,” Leonard said. “Just because there’s less lanes doesn’t mean people aren’t trying to get somewhere.”
Wang also said during deliberations that she didn’t understand “what, really, our (student fee) funds are being used for, if not for the counseling of students.”
“That should be free to students,” she said.
Funding for HOPE Services restricted to applied learning opportunities
A policy note would restrict the money allocated to HOPE Services — Health, Outreach and Prevention Education Services — funding only applied learning positions for student employees.
Because of this proposed change, an additional proviso would reclassify HOPE Services from a Student Support Service to an Educational Opportunity Fund within the student fees process. Each student fee entity falls into one of these categories. For the FY 2027 projected budget, $175,500 is available for EOFs, while the pool for Student Services totals $9,965,249.
The budget bill also only allocates $10,000 of HOPE Services’ $31,484 request.
Student Outreach Services only funded for one year
According to a policy rider, Student Outreach Services would be funded with a one-time amount of $58,086 for the next fiscal year, rather than the next two years.
SOS is the outreach team that contacts students if a CARE report is filed, expressing concern for the student’s well-being. This service is partially required by federal law.
Because of this requirement, Bumm said the commission “didn’t think that students should be directly paying for it.”
“So we decided that the best avenue was to eventually cut their funding from this process,” he said. “But, we didn’t think that it was fair to completely cut them off this close to the next school year.”
What’s next?
If the senate votes to pass the budget, it will need approval from the Student Body President, then the university president and finally from the Kansas Board of Regents, which oversees public higher education in the state.
Members of the public can speak at student senate meetings. Meetings are every Wednesday during the spring and fall semesters at 7:30 p.m. They are held in the Rhatigan Student Center, room 233. All meetings are live-streamed via SGA’s YouTube channel.
