SGA Minutes 2.01.09
Roll Call
Announcements
Your Two Cents!
Financial Crisis Discussion
Rep Presentation – Liana
Old Business
New Business
Roll Call
Announcements
Taline Cox and Steph Hilton, COPS Co-Heads: COPS is holding office hours this semester that are open to both the COPS dorm representatives but also community members. They will be held in the Campus Center Main Lounge and the hours are as follows:
Taline: Monday from 11am-12-pm, Tuesday from 9-10pm
Steph: Monday 7-8pm, Thursday 11-12pm
We hope to see you there!
Representative Presentation:
Liana Donohue, Class of ’12 President: I became president in the middle of October. We had 2 events in the middle of November, including a class tea with about 40 people in attendance. I created a Facebook group and the freshman class council, among other things. We had an LGBTQIA event in December. This semester, we are doing 2 events in February, including a Frosh/Sophomore speed-friend event. Then, we will have a talent show as a special event to start fund-raising for the class.
Your Two Cents!
Ashley Madden, ’09: As some of you may know, I have a photo exhibit in the Canaday Library Gallery. I’m the fist person to use it as a solo student exhibit, and Barbara Grubbs has just set up how you can do it easily. It’s really simple, just email her. She would love more student work.
Anne Bugnaski, ’10: I’m organizing Buzzing for Change – a one-day hair-shaving extravaganza – which will raise money for children with cancer at the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital Oncology Unity, and April 23rd is tentative date. Email me if you want to help out. We will also have a general interest meeting this week.
Financial Crisis Discussion
Aheli Purkayastha, President: We have asked each of the panelists to give a 5-10 minute presentation about how their job relates to the financial crisis, and then we will have a Q and A.
John Griffith: I am the CFO of the College. Unfortunately, I will have to be the bearer of bad news. The crisis is a very serious situation for all colleges. We are highly dependent on endowment income. The average student pays 50% of the cost of their education, the rest comes from gifts, etc. The endowment has lost 24% in the past year, which is successful in comparison, but not at all good. This will mean significant losses – 5 million dollars in budget cuts in the next three years. We will make every attempt to preserve academic quality, access to students of financial aid – pretty much everything else is on the table. We don’t want to make these decisions, but we will have to. You need to look at the fact that when we are reducing a budget, we are looking at a reduction in staff and faculty. I will be unwilling and unable to openly discuss some of these things, not because I don’t want to be transparent, but because we can’t speculate about things that relate to people’s lives. The second major revenue stream is gifts – about 6 million a year. Those people are usually involved in the stock market, so we expect decline there. We expect about $300,000 less in the budget, and a $5-600,000 loss in gifts. January was the worst month ever in S&P history. I can talk later about our investment committee, but there is no place to hide.
Jenny Rickard: It is a very serious situation, just as it is for all of us as individuals. I’m the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid. I have known all of you in some form over the years. There are two things that we are thinking a lot about. Number one is financial aid – the main message is that if there are significant changes in family circumstance that you can demonstrate, please call us, come to the financial aid office – we want to keep everyone here to the extent that we are able to. We can let you know how to do a financial aid appeal to provide us with that info to do that. We have different formulas, etc. We would be very happy to work with you. Also, a key thing is because of you. You are our mission, in terms of educating students for the future and future leadership for the world. We are expecting that our financial aid budget will go up, not down, and we are budgeting so we can meet increased need of students both here and not yet here. We are not making cuts in financial aid, we are in fact adding to it. Another area is admissions. I know people have been worried about the applications – will people still be able to afford this? We had a 5% increase in applications – over 2250 applicants – that was a surprise with the economy, so we feel good about that, but it comes down to people choosing to attend based on financial situations. The other things – in terms of thinking about a 5 million dollar budget reduction – we must keep in mind remaining a very appealing place to attend – we want to remain a competitive institution. The main thing is to call/come to the financial aid office if you have concerns.
Bernie Chung-Templeton: Director of Dining Services, and Dave Chase, Associate Director of Dining Services. We provide food services, and do so, of course, within budgetary limitations. We don’t have the option to overspend our budget. One of the things we discovered late last semester – we monitor expenses every week was that we were overspending in an increasing rate. First, it was 8-9%, then 10-11%, and by the end, it was about $60,000. It was higher than ever. Every truck-full of food costs more, items, fuel, etc. We do this all the time – add things, take things away, make changes. We know one of the things we had to do was to make adjustments. In spring semester, we protect strawberries at May Day, and certain end of year events – and it would be irresponsible to keep spending, and then serve bird feed in April to all of you. We wanted to keep a consistent quality program. Our colleagues have been doing things for year. But we have been fortunate, because we have a generous budget, and a small population – we have been able to protect you from cuts. So we started asking our staff, our management staff, and talked to our full time hourly staff – what are the things that cost the most, but affect the fewest amount of people. Thus we have the decision to remove certain things in my infamous email and subsequent article in the Bi-Co. I hope these cuts are temporary – a lot of times we pull things away, and then add them back. We are making other efforts – we are working with the Sustainable Food Committee to reduce waste. The food and containers for take-out are soooo expensive – we are hoping students will cooperate. Don’t use it if you don’t need to, and don’t take more food than you need. I’m optimistic we can add things back later.
Aheli Purkayastha: I would like to invite students who have questions to come up to the microphone.
Taline Cox: My question is for Jenny – are you expecting to admit fewer applicants, since we are at capacity?
Jenny Rickard: We are targeting a class of 365, which is what we had enrolled this year. So we are staying on track.
Sadie Marlow, Member-at-Large: You said that there are going to be budget cuts, but that the financial aid is increasing. Just wanted to clarify.
Jenny Rickard: Yes, that’s correct.
Sadie Marlow: Awesome, thanks.
Klaralee Charlton, Treasurer: How do you see this crisis affecting the plans for the gym?
John Griffith: The question of the gym renovation – the President and the Board are hoping we would have a quick fund-raising campaign – but not so much now. We are very interested in making improvements to the gym, and we are discussing that constantly, and trying to come up with ideas to do that – we all believe we need to do that, and that would be an example of something that we may end up doing anyways regardless of our financial circumstance. It is still our number one capital priority.
Jessica Scheick, ’09: I know traditionally, BMC was need-blind?
Jenny Rickard: In fact, we were never really need-blind – we did admit/deny – we would admit some regardless of need, and deny some – some would enroll, and not remain due to financial status. We went from that to need-sensitive in 1995. That means that we still read in a need-blind way, and then we go to see how much financial aid we have for the new class. Typically, every year, about 5% of the applicants we would like to admit we put on a wait-list to see if we have the financial aid. About 95% is need-blind, and now 5% is need-sensitive. When you look at us, compared to need-blind schools, the irony is that we actually spend more on financial aid than most need-blind schools. That’s why we need to be that way, because our applicant pool is more socio-economically diverse. It is confusing, but people assume that need-blind means access, and that’s just not the case.
Jessica Coulter, ’10: I have a question about food – I’m a little confused – how come we have such a generous budget for food? – we should be thankful, but…
John Griffith: I think that this goes to the quality of student life issue. This goes to the elite undergrad experience. This is considered generous.
Jessica Coulter: This wouldn’t take money out of the food budget and give to another?
John Griffith: That would be the prioritization – more food, and less financial aid, or course offerings. We will spend less on food – not to say that the food quality will deteriorate – that’s not number one, but it’s not last.
Jessica Coulter: The decreases are solely economic, yes?
John Griffith: Yes.
Jessica Coulter: I have another question. My first thought, is that the Greens club will hate me – but would switching back to old take out save us a lot of money. Another question was about vegan/vegetarian options – organic food costs more money, and I think that organic milk costs a lot, but you can buy it yourself? I know you are looking at the general population.
John Griffith: These are the kind of complicated trade-offs we are talking about.
Bernie Chung-Templeton: That’s a great question, and it’s difficult for us to manage. One of the things I learned 14 years ago when I got here, is that we focus on the few. That’s why we have so many specialty items. Anybody who has a medical or dietary need for any of the things we’ve taken out, see Mimi Murray, and you will have access to them. Vendors have been coming to us to not lose our business for 2 years have been offering lower-grade food. We can pay about a 1/3 of the cost for some of this food, but I don’t want to compromise the quality of the core products. We have heard about that from all of the surveying we have done. We have heard that you wouldn’t mind giving up some things like organic milk to avoid having prison food. We make these choices, and sometimes we make them – John talked about transparency – obviously, we can’t sit and talk with all of you – we have to make some of these decisions on our own. But feedback from you makes the decisions a little easier – call us, email, napkin notes.
Jenny Rickard: You all got the President’s email – budgetideas@brynmawr.edu – send emails to that with ideas that you think we are spending money on that we shouldn’t be.
Bernie Chung-Templeton: Biodegradable takeout containers cost us $23-26000 a year – from what we heard, a lot of that is unnecessary. A lot of people will eat food on the way to the bus, go to their rooms when they do not need to – but cutting back on that would go far. It is very expensive, and would give us funds to bring back luxury items.
Katie Kellom, Honor Board Head: I’m curious as to where the money is coming from for the renewed furniture in the dorms – was that previously assigned, or what?
John Griffith: We funded that from surpluses from the previous 2 years – when we have extra money, we would spend that on that. Rock is next on the list. That’s not to say that we don’t continue to make those improvements.
Laurel Lemon, ’11: In terms of our connections with Haverford, I know that their food is deteriorating, and everyone there is eating here. It’s really annoying – Sunday night at Haffner, we have a line out the door. It’s our food.
John Griffith: We’re feeding them the prison food.
Bernie Chung-Templeton: We do get reimbursed for them, and we are very careful to charge them appropriately – they are getting increases, trust us. If we decrease quality, they won’t come? Maybe we should be less nice to them?
Jenny Rickard: One way to save money is through increase collaboration with Haverford, so don’t be mean…
Sadie Marlow: I know that many of the male students put it away – they eat like it’s their job.
Bernie Chung-Templeton: I can’t lie – no, and unfortunately, I don’t negotiate that rate, my boss does. I would say that they pay their way, but not any more.
Aheli Purkayastha: Is there a plan in the college to address non-tenured faculty, and also staff that are not permanent positions?
John Griffith: I think everything is on the table – there will be every effort to deal with this through attrition – we won’t fill positions. There will be an impact on staff and faculty. Staff and Faculty compensation is 60% of our budget, so no way it won’t.
Anne Bugnaski: My question is about student workers – will jobs decrease for those not on financial aid, etc.?
John Griffith: That’s not an area we have looked at. I think that as budgets contract, there will be less money for workers, but I don’t expect that to be a big portion of it. That’s one of our cheapest labor forces.
Sarah Kelley, ’11: I asked this question at the Big Cheese Forum – is there a way that I as a student could look at the college financial report?
John Griffith: Come to the third floor of Taylor Hall – there is the info on the college’s budget that I will make available to anyone. Sometimes you don’t necessarily know what you are looking for, but I’m happy to discuss that with people.
Melinda Tseng, ’09: You said that our feedback is really important – how feasible is a survey to ask about where we go, what we eat, etc. Would that allow for more diverse feedback? The second part of that is, when is your next cut, and what are you thinking?
Bernie Chung-Templeton: I don’t anticipate any other cuts. We would love to do a survey, and if anyone is an expert, please contact us. If we anticipate more cuts, we will do that. We needed big cuts quickly, so there was no time to survey all 1500 of you to determine which item, etc. None for this year, but possibly next year. A lot of that does depend on how much things go up.
Melinda Tseng: I heard about the Abu Dhabi initiative – where is it being funded from?
John Griffith: It is funded out of their government’s budget, not ours.
Sarah Shaw, ’12: I was wondering – is there any way we could bring our own containers for take out – I know that there is a sign in Rhoads saying we can bring our own cups, etc.?
Dave Chase: With drinks, that’s a little easier, because we have flexibility with Board of Health. They absolutely denied us with that with tupperware. That’s why we started with foam containers.
Sharan Mehta, ’12: For somebody, who is a general community member – if your financial aid situation for this year hasn’t changed, will packages change a lot?
Jenny Rickard: We are not changing our packaging for returning students, so if circumstances – loan amounts go up as you progress, so that’s all staying the same.
Rodline Louijeune, Board of Trustees Rep: Is tuition supposed to go up for this year?
John Griffith: That is being discussed at this week’s meeting – it will go up much less than in previous years.
Rodline Louijeune: Will there be a change in financial aid because of that?
Jenny Rickard: It goes up commensurately.
Marisa Franz, Haverford Rep: To what extent do you take into account exchange rates for international students?
Jenny Rickard: We do in the initial needs analysis – we are going to have a policy group to help that situation – our international students help shelter the college because they keep the same package for the four years.
Alyssa Martin, ’10: What is your investment strategy for the future?
John Griffith: There is nothing you can do – everything dropped here. We are very diversified, with 100 investment managers. When one is doing poorly, everyone is doing poorly right now, which is unusual. Normally, a drop in the stock market is offset by gains in housing, or oil and gas. A fully diversified portfolio is intended to work through these ups and downs. The college investment committee is not taking any money out of the fund, and we are continuing to be invested in the market. We think that our strategy is sort of working, as we went down 24%, and the stock market went down 38% — another reason to get away from the market is because most of our students are from the US and are effected by the US market. We have a 2 day meeting in NY to discuss this. Our returns have been very positive compared to our peers. I actually feel optimistic about where we will head in the future, because we are well-positioned with this – but no big-picture changes. In this environment it didn’t work for anyone.
Jenny Rickard: Thank you all!
Meeting adjourned at 2:11 pm.