At the weekly Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) meeting last Wednesday, BSG Chair of the Treasury Chase Lenk ’26 presented on the Treasury Funding Commission’s (TFC) spending and proposed amendments to the TFC’s funding guidelines. In an interview with the Orient, Lenk broke down the TFC’s expenditures over the last academic year and this year so far.

 

The TFC distributes money from the Student Activities Office to student organizations on campus. Lenk chairs the committee, which is also composed of class treasurers, BSG’s charterer and multiple at-large BSG members.

Lenk explained that he wanted to undertake this breakdown of expenditures in order to help students understand how the TFC is spending their money.

“[The TFC] never really tallies how much we spend on different things, and I think that’s really important information for us to have, so we know how spending is going compared to previous years and for the student body to have, so that they understand what their tuition money is actually paying for in terms of student activities,” Lenk said.

During the 2024–25 academic year, the TFC had a budget of $840,000. This year, the budget increased by $40,000 to $880,000. However, Lenk mentioned, the TFC didn’t learn of this year’s total budget amount until recently. Nevertheless, he highlighted the importance of the increased pool of money.

“The TFC is doing a lot better in terms of having enough money to carry student activities throughout the rest of the year because of the increased budget and the reduced spending on fixed budgets,” Lenk said. “So we’re hoping to be able to meet clubs’ needs better.”

Silvia Lorrain, senior associate director of the Student Activities Office, discussed the timing of the funding announcement in an email to the Orient.

“As tuition increases, the student activities fee does as well. Once the Treasurer’s Office gives our office the finalized amount for the year, we pass that along to the TFC. Sometimes those final amounts are communicated in August, other times in September or even October,” Lorrain wrote.

Lenk also emphasized that the amount of money the College gives to student groups through the TFC is higher than peer institutions.

“Bowdoin’s student activities fund is probably [a lot higher] per student than Colby and Bates and a lot of other small liberal arts schools,” Lenk said.

In his presentation to BSG last week, Lenk discussed the TFC’s funding structure. In the spring before a new academic year, the TFC allocates funding for the next academic year’s fixed expenses—clubs and groups with a fixed budget. These groups, Lenk’s presentation listed, include the Entertainment Board (E-Board), student government, the Bowdoin Outing Club, the McKeen Center for the Common Good, some club sports teams and the College House System.

These fixed costs routinely account for the vast majority of the TFC’s spending. In the 2024–25 academic year, fixed costs made up nearly $688,000 of the TFC’s $840,000 budget—around 81 percent.

This year, fixed costs have made up around $656,000 of the TFC’s budget—around 74 percent of the total $880,000 budget and over $30,000 less than last academic year. Due to this decrease in fixed costs and increase in the total budget, Lenk noted that the TFC started with around $81,000 more to allocate than last year and currently has around $125,000 left to spend for the rest of the academic year.

Lenk’s presentation also broke down last year’s TFC spending by category and expense type. During the 2024–25 academic year, club sports received over $228,000 from the TFC, accounting for approximately 27 percent of the commission’s total budget. The arts and performing arts, which includes the E-Board’s Spring Concert, received around $173,000, or 20 percent of the commission’s budget.

Lenk discussed his reasons for breaking down the data by category, including highlighting the large amounts of money going to sources such as club sports and the E-Board.

“I want to challenge students to think about, ‘What is actually the best structure and allocation of overall money?’ Do we care so much about sports that they should be one quarter of the entire pot?” Lenk said. “Would people want to adjust? Does that seem like where your priorities are?”

In the breakdown by expense type, Lenk highlighted the food and bonding categories, which fund food for on-campus events and club bonding. Last academic year, the TFC gave out over $44,000 for food—five percent of the budget—and over $16,000 for bonding.

“I think it’s important to highlight this because food budgets are most of the budgets that [the TFC] sees week to week. And I think when most people think of what the TFC funds, the first thing you think of is how much food they give to events,” Lenk said.

Lenk is also pushing for several amendments that would change the TFC’s funding guidelines by clarifying club bonding rules and limiting food budgets. However, Lenk said, the amendments and the spending report are not related.

“The actual knowledge of all of the numbers about how much we spend on different things didn’t actually inform the guideline amendments that we’re doing, because we’re not looking to make major changes to how the overall pot of TFC money is spent,” Lenk said. “We’re not limiting clubs. We’re just clarifying how we’ve chosen to fund…. We’re essentially trying to fund all the same budgets that we used to in the past but just creating the right system to fairly accommodate all of them.”

At Wednesday’s meeting, BSG approved the amendments to better define certain types of clubs and restrict transportation funding but rejected proposals to reduce funding for kickoff events and decrease funding for food and bonding.

Lenk highlighted the importance of transparency in student government institutions and  hopes that this effort would spark conversations on campus.

“It’s important to have transparency in the student government and show what we’re actually buying, what we’re spending money on, so students actually have the opportunity to think about what is best for the student body, instead of just not knowing at all,” Lenk said. “It would be awesome if this meant that we could have a more vibrant conversation on campus about how the Student Activities fund should be spent.”