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The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

Staff Editorial: SA allocation cause for concern

Every fall a fair share of student organizations are upset, as they feel that they did not receive their fair share of the available Student Association allocation. The proposal for the upcoming year of operation has exposed some questionable decisions in the ways money is granted to both undergraduate and graduate organizations. It is troubling that a disproportionate amount of funds plan to be allocated to graduate associations based on their contributions of money and participation in student life on campus.

The sheer numbers tell most of the story: three graduate student associations from the Law School, Graduate School of Education and Human Development and School of Medicine and Health Sciences, stand to receive almost 40 percent of the available $265,000 from the SA.

Of even more concern is a closer look of how the money becomes available. Under the current system, students pay $1 per credit hour, which ends up amounting to $15 for most undergraduates. However, that rate becomes less stable with graduate students, as almost 4,000 of them are part-time students with a more variable amount of credit hours per term.

As of last year the count of credit hours for undergraduate students, and therefore their approximate monetary input, according to information from the Office of Institutional Research, came to 149,133. Meanwhile the graduate population checked in with 88,770 credit hours. Even if all of these credit hours were billable, this segment of the GW population is contributing far less than their undergraduate counterparts.

Additionally, the allocation numbers are far from proportionate to their students’ monetary contribution. In the case of GSEHD, the new association stands to gain three times more in funding allocation than what their students, according to credit hours, would have contributed. The Law School association is set to receive twice as much as their students put in.

The recently defeated proposal for a student fee increase would have not only helped guarantee funds for all of the student organizations, both undergraduate and graduate, who so desperately need them, but it would also help deter complications like this in the future. Under the proposal students would have contributed a flat fee – $30 for undergraduates and $20 for graduates. The flat rate would have eliminated any issues of variability with credit hour enrollment between the undergraduate and graduate students. This current development highlights the need for a more standardized system, a need that is unlikely to fade away quietly.

An important thing to keep in mind is that undergraduate and graduate students, although sometimes only a few years apart in age, are at very different points in their lives and have other priorities. A law student who has a family and a job is much less likely to attend a student function than an undergraduate living on campus and looking to get involved in student organizations.

And there is a difference in the types of student organizations on campus. As Andrew Salzman, a student in the GSEHD and SA vice president of judicial and legislative affairs, told The Hatchet, “.a lot of undergraduates are probably not interested in attending our events.” On the opposite side of that, members of the entire GW community are often interested in the larger undergraduate student organizations that host well-known speakers and diverse programming.

It is understandable that graduate students want to get as much out of the SA as they put in. Yet as student organizations on campus continually hunt for funding, this instance could foster animosity among multiple student bodies on campus.

We urge the SA to reduce the amount given to these organizations and fairly allocate it to more broadly based organizations who could put it to better use.

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