Open letter calls out clubs’ dissatisfaction with SGA funding process

After club officers sent a letter to SGA calling out problems with their funding and reimbursement process, SGA leadership has implemented a few changes in response. Photo by RENEE ELEFANTE, managing editor

Eight clubs have signed on to an open letter addressed to Chapman University's Student Government Association (SGA) calling out their dissatisfaction with sufficient and timely funding for club events.

The letter claims that over the past year, SGA has been failing to fulfill time-sensitive event planning requests and giving minimal reasoning as to why some events haven’t received funding.

“While filling out request forms, SGA sometimes will not respond until a few days before an event. This leaves organizations in the dark, inhibiting many logistics like advertisement, availability, and room reservations,” the letter reads.

“There is a lack of transparency regarding how the SGA makes its financial decisions. Although the SGA offers reports on funding and amounts, they don’t specify why an event was either partially funded or declined.” 

Michael Masakayan, president of the computer science club, said that clubs have been having issues with SGA regarding funding and reimbursement for various events they plan throughout the year. 

He said that although eight clubs signed onto the letter, there are a dozen more clubs that agreed with the letter, but did not sign it due to fear of repercussions from SGA.

“A lot of other clubs have reached out and told us their support,” Masakayan told The Panther. “(They) really agreed with all of the points, but either there’s someone on the board who is in SGA that didn’t want to sign it, or they had an event coming up and didn’t want it to get declined.” 

Masakayan, a senior computer science major, said the issue first came up when he was trying to plan to have his club a conference over the summer. After gathering about 10 interested club members, he said all the correspondence with SGA was incredibly slow. 

“We were kind of ghosted because it was over the summer, and they told us to wait until they could meet and talk about it. It took them a couple months to get back to us,” Masakayan said. “It really hindered the plan in general.”

Eventually, the club was approved for about $600 per person to use for the conference.

“So after we go, we all send the request forms because they said they would pay us back (within) two weeks to a month,” Masakayan said. “That was in September. We didn’t get our money back until this January… They kept saying that they were on it, but they didn’t send it until this January and they didn’t even send it to the right people. There is still one person who has not gotten their funding.” 

According to senior computer science major Nathan Nguyen, the research and design club had had similar experiences after submitting funding requests.

“Sometimes, they wouldn’t even respond until the week of the event, making it really difficult because if they do decline… the Fowler School of Engineering (doesn’t) have enough time for them to process our funding request,” said Nguyen, who currently serves as the club’s interim president. “So either we have to not go through the funding and not get stuff that we promised our members for the event, or it would have to come out of our own pockets.”

The letter has encouraged SGA to make a few changes to help address the problems.

SGA hosted two meetings to discuss this issue with club leaders earlier this month — once on March 3 and again on March 13.

Masakayan attended the second meeting and said the club leaders were able to discuss their grievances and it seemed like SGA was open for change.

Whitney Gassmann Mennes, SGA’s director of finance, said the meetings were productive and provided insights into the future of SGA’s relationship with club leaders.

“During the meeting we discussed clarifying instructions and requirements for the funding application process, additional transparency with allocations decisions and payment timelines, additional transparency and instructions for our formal appeals process, and additional information on Senate operating procedures for funding requests,” Gassmann Mennes wrote in a statement sent to The Panther.

Gassmann Mennes said that after spring break, a member of the finance team will be meeting weekly with a representative from financial services to check on request statuses to keep the process moving along smoothly.

“We are updating our email templates to clearly outline the appeals process for every request decision and explain senate procedure further in-depth for those who are attending for requests over $1000, in addition to having more prompt email responses,” Gassmann Mennes wrote.

In response to the clubs' complaints, SGA also created a public tracking sheet that clubs can access in order to see the order in which reimbursement requests are being processed.

“That, I feel like, is something we definitely needed, considering that before when they would take a while to respond to a request, we didn’t know where it was in the system,” Nguyen said. “That is definitely an important change, and I think they’ll be a lot more effective because if they just have that transparent, open to all of us that show where the request is in terms of how they’re processing it and whether it’s approved or not publicly, that would be very helpful.”

When reporting on the SGA presidential election earlier this month, The Panther included questions about this issue and how representatives can help dissatisfied clubs.

Rachel Berns, who was recently elected SGA president, said financial operations needs “extra hands on deck” to make sure everything goes smoothly when working with clubs.

“There needs to be a better line of consistent communication between SGA and individual student organizations about the state of their funding requests, rationales for why things are done a certain way and a space for concerns to be brought up and addressed immediately,” Berns wrote in her response.

Moving forward, Masakayan said that he hopes to see SGA increase communication with club leaders, respond back within a timely manner and provide more detailed information about why some events don’t receive requested funding.

“There’s been examples (of issues with SGA) since the start,” Masakayan said. “Even (while) making the club, I kept asking people in SGA for help. You’d ask someone and they’d tell you to either email them or ask someone else because they didn’t know the information. It’s completely disorganized, and I realized that there’s a lot of red tape and bureaucracy that at the end of the day hinders us from having events.”