Accused of taking money without proper authorization, the Bowdoin College Republicans have been punished by the Student Organizations Oversight Committee (SOOC) of the Bowdoin Student Government (BSG). The College Republicans ability to request money from the $625,000 fund for student activities has been revoked for the remainder of the 2007-2008 academic year.
Chair of the College Republicans Jeff Jeng '09 denied any malfeasance, attributing the error to a miscommunication. "There might have been some misunderstandings," Jeng said, but "I don't think we did anything wrong."
BSG Treasurer Nicole Willey '08, who also serves as chair of the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC), saw the situation differently.
Referring to the College Republicans she said, "They really, basically, went in and took money that was not theirs." The Republicans "disrespected the process completely, which no other club has ever done," Willey added.
After what SOOC Chair and BSG Vice President of Student Organizations William Donahoe '08 called "a thorough investigation," and after votes by both the SOOC and the SAFC, the charter of the College Republicans was downgraded to "charter two" status, which prohibits them from receiving student activity funding.
Willey and Donahoe wrote an e-mail to the College Republicans explaining their decision. "We are very disappointed that funds were withdrawn without clear confirmation of the allocation, regardless of the confusion you may have encountered," they wrote.
"You're experienced leaders who were given basic training at the mandatory information session in September and should know that you cannot withdraw funds without an allocation," they added.
The situation began when the Republicans requested $500 from the SAFC for their bi-annual barbecue.
"They told us 'thanks for coming in, we'll tell you when the funding has been approved,'" Jeng said.
Because their request for funding was not specific enough, SAFC member Jon Ragins, the treasurer of the Class of 2008, sent an e-mail to Mac Hyman '10, the treasurer of the College Republicans.
The Orient has obtained a copy of Ragins' e-mail to Hyman which read, in full, as follows: "Hi Mac, Please send us the proof of attendance for your event. We need this information before we can consider your request. -Jon Ragins, Class of 2008 Treasurer."
Ragins said he never received a response from Hyman. "I said that I needed more information concerning the expected attendance for the barbecue, which I never received," Ragins said.
But Hyman insisted that he sent Ragins a reply. "I sent an e-mail back asking him what event he was speaking of, because I'm president of Helmreich House and we, Helmreich, had other events going on that week," he said in a telephone interview. "And I never heard back from him," Hyman said.
Hyman was not able to provide a copy of that e-mail to the Orient.
The College Republicans claim they were left hanging for a few days. "It had been three or four days and the guy [Ragins] never responds," Jeng said.
"It was Thursday morning and we had to go out and get the food," Jeng said. He explained that the group got two cash advances, signed by two different program advisors in the student activities office for $375, of which they spent $359 on barbecue supplies. They returned the unspent money and their receipts.
"Prior to that I had come into the office and I had asked, 'How much money are we going to get for this barbeque?' and they looked it up and said $375," Jeng explained. "We thought [SAFC] hadn't sent us a confirmation e-mail?well they must have messed up somewhere."
Meanwhile, Willey and the SAFC, not having heard back from the Republicans, assumed the barbecue had been canceled.
"Since they never got back to us, we assumed they decided not to have the barbecue," Willey said.
"The two leaders knew they had not been allocated funding," Willey insisted in a interview. "We never gave them any indication that they had been allocated funding for the barbecue."
When a group asks the SAFC for funding for an event, Willey explained, the SAFC debates the merits of their request and then, if warranted, allocates funds. For each allocation of money, the SAFC sends an official e-mail to the group indicating how much money has been approved for the specific event.
"We concluded that there was no reason that these two guys should have been in any haze as to what was going on," Willey said.
Jeng saw the situation differently. "They said we used money that wasn't ours but the only reason we used that money is because we were given it?we didn't come in here with guns or anything demanding money," Jeng said. "We thought we were allocated the funds."
Willey disputed the notion that Jeng could have thought the College Republicans had been allocated funds for their event. "Jeff Jeng works in the Student Activities office and knows every one of those people [who work there] really well," she said.
"He works at the S.U. [Smith Union] info desk and refers kids who are coming in for funding in the right direction," Donahoe added. "He knows the process."
Allen Delong, the director of student life and the Smith Union, explained how the Republicans could have gotten a cash advance with money that was not allocated to them.
"We make accounting errors," Delong said. But "our system, as it currently works?and I think it serves students well so I would be hesitant to change it?is to trust students."
The policy of program advisers, he explained, was to trust student requests for cash advances as being truthful and accurate.
Delong called the incident with the College Republicans an "anomaly."
"The student activities fund is over $600,000," he said, "and this will be maybe one of five question marks that happen this year."
But, for the College Republicans, it is a "question mark" with serious repercussions.
Donahoe, the chair of SOOC, explained why he recommended downgrading their charter. "I thought that recommending charter two status was the most appropriate course of action because it sends a message that this is not appropriate and we're not going to let these things slide in the future," Donahoe said. "And I don't think it will happen again after this point."