For the third year in a row, the Vassar Student Association (VSA) has cut the budgets of Jewett, Josselyn and Lathrop Houses. According to the annual budget, Jewett’s and Lathrop’s funding both fell from $2,000 to $1,500, while Josselyn’s dropped from $2,000 to $1,650 after an appeals process restored some of the original losses, VSA Director of Finance Aneesh Koppolu ’27 told The Miscellany News.
The cuts reduce Jewett’s and Lathrop’s VSA budgets by 25 percent, and Josselyn’s by 17.5 percent. The budgets of the other six residential houses, Cushing, Davison, Main, Noyes, Raymond and Strong, all remained at $2,000, according to a copy of VSA’s annual budget review by the Miscellany.
According to the budget, the money comes from the Student Activity Fee, a small charge on top of each fully enrolled student’s tuition, set this year at $370 per student. Houses also benefit from funding provided to them by the Office of Residential Life through the HOME program, a residential education program which some house events center on.
Funding allocated by the VSA is meant to cover events open to the entire student body, such as each house’s all-campus event. These include Lathrop’s “Lath Love” and Davison’s “Davi Prom,” two dances with live music traditionally held in the spring semester.
As HOME event money is traditionally only used for the HOME events, the budget from the VSA covers all other events, according to House Team members from multiple dorms.
Study breaks, which each house holds once a week, fall within a gray area. House Team members from the three affected houses said they typically use the VSA-allocated money for these events, which are not restricted to residents of the house hosting the event but are primarily advertised to those students.
“Every year, we have at least 10 to 20 more [student] organizations,” said VSA President Nico Reyes Cardozo ’27. “The activity fee does not go up with tuition. That means that as things get expensive, there’s inflation, there’s more orgs and there’s more people interested in creating orgs, but there’s the same amount or even less money every year.”
Koppolu explained that every organization funded by the VSA, including the nine residential houses, submits the same annual budgeting application each spring. The application asks for a breakdown of the previous year’s events along with their attendance and expenditures. Houses who report less spending and fewer qualifying events receive less money the following year.
“These three houses reported less spendings and less events than the other houses,” Reyes Cardozo said. “That’s why they decreased the money.” One house’s request listed just one event, costing $1,300 dollars, Reyes Cardozo said. He explained, “They’re requesting $2,500. There’s no evidence for us to support $2,500, so we’re going to give you what you justify.”
“If it’s restricted to just the houses, and if it’s promoted as a HOME event, it should be from the HOME budget,” Reyes Cardozo added.
“I think we’re left with $10 per study break,” said Lathrop Community Fellow Emily Mitchell ’29 of the house’s funding after the cuts. “That is not even enough for food.”
For students, food is a major appeal of the study breaks, and it is a large part of what draws a crowd. Multiple students told the Miscellany the prospect of pizza, bagels or other food was what drew them to their house events.
“Lath Love,” which over 100 students attended last year, cost around $1,500, according to the Lathrop House Team members interviewed. “I think for all campus events, you want as many people to come as possible,” Lathrop Student Fellow Mairead Rader ’29 said. “Cutting down that budget makes it harder for us to have things where we can have the whole school go.”
These all-campus events are typically hosted outside of the house, requiring security fees which can dig into House Team budgets. The VSA recently established a new $25,000 fund which organizations, including House Teams, can apply for that is specifically designated for paying security.
Organizations, including House Teams, can also appeal for more money after the initial budget allocation. “I had $18,000 to give out and $30,000 in demand,” Koppolu said. “There’s only limited resources that we have remaining, and there’s really big orgs like the Bike Shop that had almost no budget at all.”
On top of the $25,000 security fund available to any organization on a rolling basis, VSA has over $100,000 in special-purpose funding which organizations, including houses, can apply for should they exhaust their allocated budgets partway through the year. “Any time they believe that their funding is going to be insufficient for the events they have planned for the rest of the year, they can come in,” Koppolu noted.
“I feel like the VSA didn’t really communicate to the vice presidents anything,” Jewett Vice President Angelina Maradiaga ’29 said. House vice presidents manage their house’s weekly spending, but Maradiaga felt that the VSA’s annual leadership training was geared more towards organization treasurers, leaving vice presidents feeling unprepared. She attributed Jewett’s funding cut to a previous semester in which the then-vice president left funds unused.
Reyes Cardozo said that the VSA recognizes that information around budgeting can improve, and pointed to plans within the organization’s communications division for social media posts explaining the annual budgeting process. “House leaders don’t ever come to VSA to talk to us,” he said. “If they want more collaboration from the VSA, they need to put some effort into building this relationship.”
“We have limited resources, limited money,” Reyes Cardozo said. He hopes house leaders and the broader student body understand that this year’s budget cuts were not targeted but the product of a fixed, shrinking pool of money spread across a growing number of organizations.
“If we’re not able to host events with an incentive for something fun, there’s going to be no community. These events are mostly for First-Years to get to know each other and to learn about the community here at Vassar,” Maradiaga said. “If we don’t have enough money to host these events, there’s gonna be a lack of community.”