Students can no longer depend on the University Student Senate to fund the university’s Student Emergency Fund or their individual projects.
Following administrators’ concerns that funding in these ways was out of compliance with IRS regulations and university policy, the Student Leadership and Involvement Office (SLI) instituted new guidelines over the summer.
Those guidelines were communicated to the senate by university administrators on Aug. 16. Neither entity has communicated the new guidelines to the wider student body.
The senate’s fund is filled by the $8 Student Senate Fee that students must pay every semester. Providing funding to individual students was a violation of “a multitude of laws [that] govern student fees,” Senior Director for Student Leadership, Involvement, and Transition Experiences and advisor to the senate, Andrade Fearon said.
Merrie Snead, a spokesperson for the university, later clarified to the New School Free Press that while “USS funding guidelines are not impacted by financial aid regulations,” they “were updated to be in compliance with IRS regulations, which require that an “accountable plan” is established and maintained by the university.” The guidelines were also updated “to align with university best practices and policies,” which include the university’s Finance and Business Office’s policies and the University Business Expense Policy, which ensure compliance with the US Government, according to Snead. She added that all of the university’s policies are guided by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which set the standard rules for preparing and reporting accounting statements in the United States.
In order for university money to be spent according to IRS accountable plan guidelines, specific conditions must be met, such as being business-related. According to Snead, it requires that “expenses incurred for New School-related programs and activities be supported by receipts/invoices and proof of payment that clearly document the purpose of the expense.”
Student fees must be used for the specific reason they were collected, Fearon explained. The Student Senate Fee is meant for student activities on campus that impact the entire community. Therefore, it cannot be utilized for aid, academic purposes, or individual student projects, which, Fearon said, the senate has done over the two years he has been their advisor.
The senate has been providing funding to individual students through the Academic Fund and Material Fund, which was formally created in 2021, according to Snead. Students could use this funding to purchase class needs like canvases, fabric, and books or to support “a thesis, conference, or portfolio,” among other things, according to the senate’s website at the time of publication.
Last academic year, 27 students, with 17 noted as Academic or Material fund recipients, received funding for individual needs or projects, according to Snead. 22 of those 27 students would not be eligible under this year’s funding guidelines, she added.
The senate began providing funding to the university’s emergency fund in the 2020-2021 academic year. Last year the senate provided “around $25,000” to the fund, but has provided “much more” in other years, according to Adam Young, the senate chair and a second-year student at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts.
“It was a clear violation of the utilization of these fees to be donating to the emergency fund…The government can come in and audit us and say, ‘Why are we utilizing this fee for these purposes?’” Fearon said. “It’s not something that we should have been doing as an institution with this fee.” The emergency fund remains open to students and filled by other sources.
It is unclear exactly how much funding has been improperly allocated to the emergency fund and individual students by the senate since they began providing funding in these ways during the 2020-2021 academic year.
To comply with all laws, IRS regulations, and university policies, now, any funding provided by the senate must support “more than three students,” which is a benchmark the university dictated, Fearon said. Instead of a Community, Academic, and Material Fund, the senate will have two main budget categories. The first is a Regular Budget Request fund for general events, activities, meetings, and performances by a group of students or Registered Student Organizations (RSOs), like clubs and sports teams. The second is a Major University Initiative Budget Request fund for “major events,” such as concerts, rallies, programming series, public conferences, or projects, like the Parsons Street Seats, that require collaboration between more than four RSOs, or students and more than one administrative office. Additionally, to ensure RSOs are properly supported, they can now request up to $7,500 a year, an increase from the previous cap of $5,000.
Fearon said he did not think the university community would suffer from the removal of access to individual funding from senate sources as he believed a “very small amount of students were requesting” funding from them. Young, however, said he thought the sudden loss of these funding options would “greatly impact students. I mean, it’s something that they’re so used to,” he said.
Despite Young saying he was “upset” individual students could no longer access senate funding, he thinks this guideline shift could benefit students if executive deans or individual colleges took over the responsibility of providing and distributing individual funding from a different source. He emphasized that he believed the senate’s funds and focus should be on supporting the entire community and student life, not taking on what he believed to be the university’s role of helping students in need.
“What authority should I, as a politics major, have in determining if a student should have funding for an art project at Parsons? That should be something that [the university] does,” Young said. “It is not in the university’s best interest to allow us to continue doing this.”
Fearon shared Young’s hopes that individual colleges could take over financially supporting students, suggesting a Lang Supplies or Parsons Art Fund. Both told the NSFP that the senate and SLI were exploring options to open new avenues of funding for students, from other university funds, not student fees, in more just, responsible, and legally compliant manners.
The new guidelines will also no longer allow the senate to roll their leftover funds over into the next academic year. That rollover privilege, which no other university department or student group has, allowed the senate to accumulate a projected $400,000 this academic year.
“There are rollovers from students that graduated four or five years ago that the senate is just sitting on. That isn’t impacting the community in a positive way,” Fearon said. Each year, the senate fee provides the senate with over $160,000.
Instead of rolling over to the next academic year, unused senate funding will go towards the “university’s income,” according to Snead. However, she told the Free Press that the senate would retain possession of the funds they had accumulated prior to July 1, 2024.
In efforts to further ensure senate funds are handled responsibly and legally, the new guidelines also implement a more formalized, organized, and streamlined funding request review process with additional oversight from SLI.
“Last year, the senate, to be quite frank, just approved any request that came in. There was no consistency and there was nothing to point to,” Fearon said. “There were times last year where the senate was funding items that were outside of their purview, and my office [SLI] consistently had to, after the approval of the senate, [rescind that approval] because what the senate approved cannot be funded by the institution or the fee, or … goes against university business policy,” he said.
He described the past request process “like the Wild West,” as there was no consistency or transparency in how students were submitting requests or how those requests were presented to the Finance Committee. “So, we’ve streamlined the process all students go through [so it] can be tracked by the university and by the senate,” he said.
Fearon said a large part of his role as the senate’s advisor is to help them “clean up” their financial practices. Young said the senate is working with Fearon and SLI to increase budget transparency this academic year.