In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Student Bar Association (SBA) Senate voted to allocate over $79,000 to law school student organizations, roughly $14,000 more than originally proposed. The “extraordinary meeting,” called by SBA President Cherissa Lindsay Tuesday afternoon, had one goal: to settle the budget issues raised by student organizations at last week’s Senate meeting.
The Senators were ultimately successful. At the conclusion of the meeting at 12:57 a.m. on Sept. 4, the Senate approved a new budget. President Lindsay and Vice President of Finance Hitchez noted that organizations will have access to funding immediately because, while the SBA is still waiting to receive its P-card, the Dean of Students Office has offered to put any urgent charges on their own P-card until the Office can be reimbursed by the SBA.
Alas, numerous concerning revelations came to light throughout the four hour meeting: the SBA First Year Programming team funds portions of the Inns of Court program, the First Year Programming team wasn’t given a budget in time for orientation, law students are bad at math, and many Senators still don’t know how to ask a question without turning it into a comment. Nevertheless, prior to the motion to adjourn, Sen. Rohin Balkundi (3L-Jackson) asked those in attendance to take a moment and be proud of their work that evening, saying, “I’m glad we got this done and clubs will be able to access their money soon.”
While the passage of the SBA Senate Allocation Bill leaves plenty of lingering questions and many unhappy, there is one thing that has become strikingly clear in all of this — we all need to revisit the Hunger Games trilogy. We law students — much like Katniss throughout Catching Fire and most of Mockingjay — still haven’t learned the most vital lesson of all: “when you’re in the arena, remember who the real enemy is.”
Tuesday’s meeting was riddled with bitter arguments for and against the various parties involved in the allocation process. Oftentimes, it felt like Senators saw the enemy as the other tributes in the arena — organizations with larger proposed allocations needed to be taken down so that their favored organizations could survive.
The amendments immediately began with a $3,000 cut to Law Revue proposed by Sen. Isabel Shemaria (2L-Marshall). She stated that her constituents favored reapportioning the amounts proposed for student organizations rather than pulling from the Executive allocation because of concerns related to Barrister’s Ball 2025. After pushback from Sen. Balkundi, Law Revue left the meeting with an allocation of $13,500, a cut of $1,799.52 from the original proposal, but still the largest of the night. That $1,800 was redistributed to other student organizations.
In other moments, the enemy was the Executive — the President Snow of this scenario, the dictator who exerts control by sowing dissent and paranoia amongst the general population.
Sen. Quinn Biever (2L-Brandeis) led this charge, repeatedly reminding Senators that they didn’t have to pull from organizations — they were permitted to reallocate money from the Executive. Sen. Elan Reisner (Day at-Large) was successful in convincing the Senators present to allocate $6,000 to the Equal Justice Foundation (EJF) from the Executive budget. The Black Law Students Association (BLSA) also acquired $3,000 from the Executive budget, bringing their total allocation to $6,205.07. Additionally, $1,000 of the Labor & Employment Law Society’s $2,621.76 allocation came from the Executive budget, for a total Executive budget allocation trimming of $10,500.
The frustrations of the Executive officials present were palpable. At the beginning of the meeting, Vice President Hitchez claimed that the Executive budget was being cut by 40 percent while the student organization budget was only being cut by 20 percent. Vice President Hitchez neglected to mention that the Executive budget allocation from the SBA last year was only $70,000, and that its increased budget in recent years was due to pandemic-era rollover money, all of which is now gone. The Vice President’s numbers were pulled from the Executive’s total $309,189 budget, not the $70,000.
Additionally, throughout the meeting, Senators were frequently reminded that we will be having a very different Lawlloween and Barrister’s Ball this year, while other Executive-sponsored events are likely to be cut. With the current constraints, Vice President Hitchez revealed that Lawlloween tickets would likely be sold for $65 or $70, and Barrister’s Ball tickets would likely be sold for around $100.
But it was Sen. Omer Turkomer (2L-Jackson), the Senate Finance Committee Chair, who repeatedly reminded the Senators of the real enemy. The so-called enemy isn’t the Senators who disagree with you and your organization, other organizations with bigger allocations, or even the Executive branch and their allocation — it’s the university policies that continue to negatively impact law students, our organizations, and our quality of life here on campus.
Sen. Turkomer revealed that the $240,000 allocated to the entirety of the SBA every year isn’t quite what it seems. That $240,000 — a combination of funding coming from the Student Government Association, the university, and the Dean of Students Office — includes remaining organization R Fund account balances from the previous year, rather than those funds carrying over in addition to the $240,000. That means, for example, that if student organizations had $50,000 left in their various R Fund accounts at the end of last year, the SBA would only receive an additional $190,000 this year. This policy encourages us to engage in wasteful spending because, by not spending money left in our R Fund accounts at the end of the year, we are essentially throwing it away. It also disincentivizes organization fundraising — why spend time and energy fundraising beyond what you need when it means the SBA will get less money next year?
This type of policy has permeated into the Senate as well. Sen. Akhil Kambhammettu (3L-Brandeis), the 2023–2024 Senate Finance Committee Chair, stated that the R Fund accounts of organizations are usually a factor in the allocation process and encouraged the same approach this year. Sen. Turkomer, meanwhile, repeatedly called for a united front against such policies to help future generations of law students avoid the problems we are faced with currently. Sen. Turkomer has been consistent in this stance since taking over as the Committee Chair this summer. In the budget training for student organization leaders on July 31, Sen. Turkomer stated:
“In past years we considered an organization’s R Fund…. [The Committee] used it to see that the organization didn’t really need any SBA assistance. This year, I’m not going to be considering an organization’s R Fund. Personally, I don’t think that the effort that an organization puts in to genuinely raise money should be a negative factor in how much money they get from the SBA.”
These policies are our President Coin — the real enemy in the end because they will perpetuate the cycle if we don’t do something to stop them. And as long as we continue to fight amongst ourselves and with the Executive, we can’t focus on the real problem and make real change. To do that, we have to follow Sen. Turkomer’s advice and advocate together.
