Student Government Association will use $20,000 from the Office of Student Life for co-sponsorships, which allowed them to budget for more money than they received from the university.
These funds are separate from their $91,000 budget.
The account is managed by Jennifer Jones-Hall, director of student life. She said there had been some confusion about the $20,000 because the executive board is still learning how their budget works.
“They have it to spend, but it is not in their budget,” Jones-Hall said. “That $20,000 is not in their account, it is in my account — it physically will never be in their account.”
Kevin Mullaney, SGA treasurer, said the organization gets most of their money from the university, and Campus Activities Fund Board resources are extra to be used only for co-sponsorship.
“[CAFB] is a different account so it is not officially under the SGA budget, even though we use it,” Mullaney said. “That is why it appears that we are $20,000 over budget.”
Jones-Hall has worked with the Office of Student Life for three years, but said before she came to Ball State, CAFB was a standing board that gave out money to student organizations for activities and event planning.
Then, SGA expanded its duties to include co-sponsoring other student organizations, so the bulk of the CAFB funds are dispersed to other student organizations by SGA.
“Because it comes from the Office of Student Life, the money is to be used only for organizations that report under the Office of Student Life,” she said.
According to the Bursar and Loan Administration, each student taking more than seven credits a semester is charged $1.69 each year for the CAFB.
SGA is the only organization that is guaranteed money from this account, Jones-Hall said, and SGA has received nearly $20,000 for the past three years.
This year, Jones-Hall also allotted money to Spectrum, the Black Student Association, the Latino Student Union and the Asian American Student Association for an overnight retreat and for the Greek Leadership Summit in January.
Jones-Hall said SGA must use the portion allocated for co-sponsorship before the group has access to the CAFB account.
So far, SGA has not spent the allotted $13,000 for co-sponsorship yet.
