College council budgets unequal

How much each residential college can spend per semester varies greatly, with Wilson getting only $4,000 for large events and Butler even less.

“It just hurts me because we’re all Princeton students, but there is a lot of inequity in Wilson [in general],” Wilson College Council co-chair Peck Yang ’11 said, referring also to housing options.

“[There is] a sense of inferiority in Butler and Wilson when [other colleges] have special college nights,” Wilson College Council co-chair Maya Le Gall ’11 said.

“Each college receives a similar amount to support programming in the colleges (with a slight adjustment for number of residents),” Associate Dean of the College Claire Fowler said in an e-mail. “Exactly how much of that is allocated for college council spending is decided by the master and staff of each college.”

This budget is paid for from a mix of “general funds” and the $595 residential college fee that each student in the college pays, Fowler added. This budget covers trips, RCA funding, academic activities, study breaks and other college council events.

While the colleges “were originally set up, renovated and equipped with money from private donors,” Forbes College Master Christian Wildberg said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian in November 2006, “that money is long gone, and the annual budget comes from the residential college fee.” In other words, while the original donation amounts may have varied, current funding levels are equal.

College council officers and college administrators declined to reveal budgets for residential college-wide events.

Paying for logistics

To host any “sufficient event” in the spring, the college councils of Butler and Wilson had to combine their budgets, Le Gall said. They recently co-hosted a photo auction for charity and a dance. Planning for a joint spring field day event is also underway.

Even taking into account the joint budgets, they are “underfunded,” Le Gall said.

When the joint Butler-Wilson college councils approached a party equipment company to discuss renting equipment for the field day, original plans had to be adjusted significantly, as it became clear that the money would not go as far as the councils had hoped, Le Gall said. The Forbes College Council, however, had no problem securing the exact same equipment for a similar event later this spring.

Le Gall said that the company told her, “[Forbes has] a lot more money than you. This won’t be feasible for you.”

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Planning spring events for Wilson is “overextending our budget,” Yang said. “We’re hoping to get money through the [USG] Projects Board, and we have to cut out little things that would be really appealing to students.”

Yang added that he thought it was paradoxical that the University is trying to host more events at the residential colleges that can serve as alternatives to the Street while Wilson’s budget is “restrictive.”

Butler College Council co-chair Cathy Vu ’11 agreed that one of the biggest constraints on event planning is the budget. “It costs so much to rent all the equipment, publicity, posters, getting shirts. Getting people out there is the biggest part,” she said. “Money is definitely a concern.”

She added that while Forbes and other colleges may not host more events than Butler and Wilson, “the quality of [theirs] might be different.”

Not everyone involved with the Butler-Wilson college councils believes their budgets to be a problem.

During her time as Butler College Council chair, Devon Ahearn ’09 said, she felt that “the budget was actually fairly generous.” She was assigned a budget by the college office staff at the outset of each semester, which “kept us from going overboard,” she added.

Greener grass

While Wilson and Butler are scrimping for their large projects, other college councils are not so concerned about money when planning events.

Forbes College Council chair Michael Perl ’11 said that Forbes hosts one or two large events per semester, including a laser tag trip and a spring carnival in the upcoming weeks.

In planning these events, the Forbes College Council has seemed to avoid some of the anxieties that Butler and Wilson are facing. “We have ... all the money we could want and need,” Forbes College Council member Gavin Byrnes ’11 said. “It never seems to be a problem for us.”

Perl noted, however, that there is still some degree of discretion. “We try to do as much as we can with the money that we have,” he said. “We try to be responsible with the money,” he explained, adding that the college spent about $5,000 on its Casino Night last fall.

Whitman College Council chair Chip McCorkle ’09 also said he believes Whitman holds a similar number of events to other colleges. The college recently hosted a Family Feud event and is planning “Whitmania” for later this spring.

“My sense is that the number of events we put on is in line with the number other colleges do,” he said in an e-mail. “But if there is a discrepancy, I’d attribute it to how highly-motivated the members of our council have been this year.”

The Rocky College Council budget is “not a hard-and-fast number,” Rocky administrator Karen Sisti said. “It’s based on ideas that would interest most of the students ... on what they propose.” Rocky’s events range from movies in the common room to a spring barbeque.

Study breaks

Both the budgets for the large-scale projects and the separate study break budgets vary across the residential colleges.

“If we had more money, I think for one thing, we’d make the study breaks more interesting,” Le Gall said. “We have to think about what costs less than $300 and can feed 200 people.”

Unfortunately, that is often not enough. With a bigger budget, Le Gall said, “we’d get more food [given how] often we run out in the first 15 minutes.”

Sisti, however, said that Rocky’s study breaks are “one of our claims to fame.” She added that they feed about 300 people on a weekly basis.

Rocky resident Neal Yuan ’10 said that the college council does “a good job of bringing in variation.” Tuesday night’s study break included waffles, ice cream and fruit, he noted. The council also orders food from The Original SoupMan, Quiznos and other local vendors.

Mathey resident Michael Hasling ’10 added that Mathey and Rocky study breaks are comparable in quality. Though they sometimes run out of the most popular items, he said, they usually have something for everyone.