The pattern of low spending on publicity continues with this year’s Executive Student Government Association (SGA). Finding the most effective way to utilize the budget continues to be a shortcoming.
“Organizing the budget at the start of the academic year makes things difficult,” states vice president of SGA, Rebecca Martell. “There really is no one right way of handling the budget since it fluctuates year by year because of enrollment.”
The Student Government Association budget is comprised of student fees that are taken out of each enrolled student’s tuition. Using the publicity budget has been one of the tougher challenges over the years.
According to Keri Lewis, the acting assistant dean of community life, “spending in publicity has been minimal since 2012… However, the efforts made towards publicizing events on campus have been accomplished through funding from other departments like social life, recreational life, and spiritual development.”
With the student fees, SGA then decides how much money goes into each department. According to the SGA Transparency Reports for Fall 2018, the majority of that money goes towards student events and recreational life. In fact, for October 2018, $2149.81 was spent on student events. That is nearly the equivalent of taking 2.5 credits of summer courses ($2400) at ENC in 2018. In contrast, $10 was spent on publicity in October 2018, the equivalent of paying for two meals in the cafeteria.
During his tenure as director of publicity last year, Niki Ghosh did manage to use all of his budget. However, over 95 percent of his budget went towards funding to cover the cost of Spring Fever Day in 2018. The remaining percentage went towards a basketball hoop within the SGA office, available to all students as a means to encourage students to enter the SGA office and shoot for the chance at winning a gift card. This was also funded by the publicity budget.
“Most of what I was able to do regarding publicity didn’t require much money,” says Ghosh. “Word of mouth, creative social media campaigns, and posters were my main methods for spreading awareness for on-campus events.”
With the small nature of the campus, not much expenditure is required to promote activities, according to Ghosh.
Jael Bourque, the current director of publicity, is “hoping to perform [her] duties as director of publicity using [her] budget wisely.”
If you would like to view SGA’s expenditure in publicity and other departments, you can view the Transparency Reports for last semester at these links below.
Fall Semester Transparency Reports