STUDENT LIFE. Participation in student organizations, which Crusada wants to be given a greater allocation of the Student Activities Fund, is a hallmark of the Ateneo college experience. Photo by Ryan Y. Racca.

STUDENT POLITICAL party Christian Union for Socialist and Democratic Advancement (Crusada) is pushing for the disclosure of the amount of the Student Activities Fund (SAF), a sum of money for student activities collected from students during registration, as well as for the increase of the budget allocation of student organizations.

“The [Office of Student Activities (OSA)] never fully discloses to us how much is in the SAF, maybe because of the bureaucratic procedures that they have to deal with,” said Crusada Premier Brian Llamanzares. “Then again, I feel that the student body should know how much is in the SAF.”

Llamanzares said that, through Crusada’s party members in the Sanggunian Central Board (CB), the party filed a resolution called the “Freedom of Information Bill,” which would compel the Sanggunian to find out how much is in the SAF.

He added that a second resolution was filed with the intention of increasing the budget of student orgs.

“We realized that it’s difficult to work with only P40,000 for one semester full of projects, so why not increase that?” Llamanzares said. “But you can’t say how much to increase a budget by if you don’t know how much budget’s in the SAF.”

Llamanzares acknowledged that Crusada needs to pursue further research regarding its two proposals. Last July 20, the party conducted a focus group discussion with the finance officers of several orgs for a dialogue on the SAF and the OSA’s fund allocation system.

Crusada is planning to hold more consultations with OSA and different student groups in the coming weeks.

Determining the SAF

Sanggunian President Gio Alejo said that even without the resolutions Crusada filed, though, the specifics of the SAF could already be determined. “I myself really want to know how much really is in the SAF. We just need to set a meeting with OSA Director Chris Castillo for us to see how much is in the account, where is it going, and how much technically each organization and student group gets.”

“Second, you can actually compute it already—based on the SAF that each student pays, times the number of students who enroll, times the number of sems, plus summer sem,” Alejo explained. “So technically, we have our rough [estimate] of how much the SAF per year consists of.”

Sanggunian Finance Officer Billie Dumaliang said that she has her own unofficial calculations of the SAF, but added that the CB could undertake a more detailed research on fund.

“The administration has already been asked to disclose financial information many times, but like all offices [and] private institutions, it reserves its right to confidentiality for obvious reasons,” she said in an email interview. “However, the Sanggunian, as the student government, is constitutionally bound to deliver its financial report every month, and that we will continue to do.”

Funding system

Dumaliang said, “We can lobby [raising the budget for orgs] to OSA, but we’ll need data to support that move.”

Council of Organizations of the Ateneo President Gigi de Villa said that the proposal to increase the budget allocation of orgs should be studied further.

She noted that there is no existing research data from student orgs to back up the second resolution pushed by Crusada.

Meanwhile, Alejo pointed out that the Sanggunian, OSA and COA had already launched their new grant systems, which could help orgs.

The grant system is called Boost, the Student Activities Financial Support and Rewards Program through which student orgs and other student groups can apply for project grants.

However, Llamanzares said that what Crusada is trying to eliminate is the bureaucratic nature of such a grant system.

“These grant systems exist, yes, but one, students don’t really know about them; two, [applying for a grant] is a hassle for organizations who already have so many problems to deal with,” he said.

“The orgs should be given readily accessible funds, rather than apply for a grant. Imagine—the amount of time that they [will spend] applying for the grant is the amount of time that they aren’t sure whether or not their projects will proceed,” Llamanzares said. “And they lose sponsors, lose activities, lose people who can go to these activities.”

Budget cap on Sanggu

Llamanzares said that Crusada originally looked into demanding the redistribution of wealth from the Sanggunian to the different student orgs.

“That’s not to say that the Sanggunian doesn’t do a good job, because [they] have some projects that do work like SOM Night, SOSS Week, things like that, where you really have the whole student body coming together,” Llamanzares said.

However, he thinks that more resources should be invested on org projects that truly develop the potential of Ateneans.

School of Social Sciences Junior CB Representative Louis de Jesus said in a mix of English and Filipino, “There are a lot of people complaining how come Sanggu officers in general… [are] able to spend money so easily.”

It is in this light that de Jesus first unofficially presented a draft of a bill entitled “A Fair Deal for Ateneo Act of 2012” last July.

The bill proposes to put a cap on the Sanggunian budget to free up funding for accredited orgs, mandating that no more than 50% of the SAF be granted to the Sanggunian’s projects.

After research and consultations with Sanggunian officers, however, Crusada discovered that the Sanggunian does not get a set budget for its projects from the SAF every year, unlike student orgs.

“What [the Sanggunian] does is it goes to the SAF and it asks for budget for their projects,” Llamanzares said. “It just so happens that they [ended] up reaching roughly P2 million [for their projects last year].”

Dumaliang said that the budget cap proposal is “workable,” but added that the critical issue would be the amount of the cap.

“The potential cap will not help in internal efficiency, but it may be a ‘preventive measure’ for the Sanggunian not to get too much of the SAF,” she said.

She added that proponents of the cap must consider that the Sanggunian budget is not only allotted for the Sanggunian’s own projects, but is also used to subsidize events like the A-Fair and the OrSem.

Moreover, Dumaliang said, “Putting a cap on the Sanggunian budget decreases the power of the democratically voted Central Board representatives to represent students in the allocation of the SAF. This means… putting more funds in the jurisdiction of OSA, farther from the monitoring of student representatives.”

Nevertheless, Dumaliang noted that the Sanggunian is planning to directly lobby for greater transparency with regard to the SAF in the upcoming meetings with Vice President for the Loyola Schools John Paul Vergara.

The GUIDON contacted OSA Director Chris Castillo for an interview and received a favorable response. The interview has not yet taken place as of press time.

With reports from Jose C. Cua