Ellie Park, Multimedia Managing Editor

With the majority of the Yale College Council’s near-million dollar budget spent in the first semester, YCC finance leaders are looking towards alumni funding and administrative assistance in meeting the needs of Yale students this term.

Working with the Yale Business Office, the council’s fund distribution plan began this past July. Significant efforts were put toward inquiring about revenue from student activity fees, the voluntary tuition expense that assists in covering campus extracurricular costs. 

According to YCC Chief Financial Officer Adnan Bseisu ’26, the fees effectively go to the YCC’s Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee, UOFC, which is the primary mode of funding for registered student organizations at Yale.

A third of the YCC budget has been put toward the UOFC. Last year, the UOFC had a budget of approximately $370,000. This year, however, the budget was increased to $400,000 to assist in the complex process of supporting on-campus extracurriculars.

“[Most students] probably don’t feel it, but if you’ve spoken to people, [last year], it was very tight funding,” Bseisu said. “Student organizations felt significantly underfunded, and I’d say the reason is because, recently, we had an explosion in the number of registered organizations with Yale College.”

He cites the pandemic and limited student interactions as reasons for the increase in organizations in recent years. 

During it, the YCC benefited from a surplus of funding, as student organizations went virtual and often held meetings and socials via free platforms such as Zoom.

“We were fine, and we actually let our budget carry over the years during COVID because we didn’t need all of it,” Bseisu said. “Coming back to campus, a lot of new organizations popped up. And new organizations, because they don’t have alumni networks or institutional sponsors, rely very heavily on the UOFC to support themselves.”

Bseisu said that this influx in student groups strained the YCC’s budget and compelled leaders to increase the student organization baseline funding from $370 per group to $405. Despite the UOFC budget increase, the YCC has begun seeking alumni collaboration funding via Yale SOAR.

Additionally, another third of the council’s budget has been allocated towards Spring Fling. 

The process in coordinating and funding Spring Fling, Bseisu said, is often complicated, though.

“There’s almost like a Chinese wall between Spring Fling and the rest of the YCC,” Bseisu said. “Because they’re under such strict NDAs with the artists they’re speaking to that we don’t actually know which artists they’re booking, we just give them the money.”

Bseisu said, nevertheless, because of the event’s historical success, the YCC confidently entrusts them with fund management.

The final third of the budget is sourced from grants and the YCC endowment, which generates returns every year and is used to fund policy teams. Successful initiatives such as printing stipends and a healthcare transportation program, funded with the help of the administration, are examples of products from these teams.

“The goal of any reimbursement program is not that the YCC funds it in perpetuity but that the administration recognizes that it’s a non-tuition expense that they should be covering for FGLI students,” Bseisu said.

Erica Yu ’28 an first-generation, low-income — or FGLI — student at Yale believes that YCC stipends are imperative in equalizing the playing field for students of different backgrounds.

Yu hopes that, with administrative assistance, more students will have access to the reimbursements and stipends in the coming years.

“One of the biggest pressures I had when choosing a school was figuring out how to support myself and my family,” Yu said. “The stipends create equity for those of us who didn’t have those opportunities or backgrounds.”

When asked what changes Bseisu would like to see made in YCC, he said that he believed it was “absurd” for the YCC, a student organization, to be solely responsible for funding other student organizations and providing stipends with limited assistance or intervention from Yale administration. 

He said that he has had conversations with administrators — such as University President Maurie McInnis and Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis — to discuss how Yale College can step in to fund aspects of the UOFC. He believes that with their assistance, the YCC can begin focusing on other pertinent issues such as subsidizing student formal wear and helping students buy textbooks.

Lewis declined to comment but redirected the News to Associate Dean Hannah Peck, who said that the UOFC sets its own procedures in deciding how to receive funding.

“We want to be sure that the student members of the committee are making decisions about how the funds are distributed since the money comes directly from their fellow students,” Peck said.

Due to funding constraints, cuts have been made. The most notable cuts the YCC has made this semester are from internal team funding. In the past, internal team funding was $1,500 per team. However, after noting that mean and median spending were only near the $750 mark and that teams such as Health & Accessibility tended to overextend, Bseisu and the finance team decided to lower spending from $1,500 to $750. Also, following Senate approval this past year, the YCC moved $20,000 from the Emergency Fund toward Spring Fling funding.

Bseisu, who worked as a deputy policy director last year, said that the finance team has yet to encounter any serious issues this year, and he is excited to see what comes from funding this semester.

“It’s probably one of the most well-budgeted student organizations on campus,” Bseisu said. “It really impacts and touches every student on campus, but we are only as strong as the administration empowers us to be.”

The YCC’s total budget for the 2024-25 school year is $929,609.

OLIVIA CYRUS
Olivia Cyrus covers the Yale College Council at Yale. Originally from Collierville, Tennessee, she is a first year in Morse College majoring in English.