Historic: $400,00 Aid Towards Facilities and Securities Costs and Summer 2025 Student Group Storage

Dear ABC Student Group Leaders,

As we head into the holidays, ABC appreciates the hard work that you have all shown during this semester as leaders of your student groups. Your contribution to Columbia’s student life has been impactful and essential for students to find community on campus and explore their interests.

Year over year, and especially after the pandemic, there has been a huge increase and enhancement in student group programming. From building communities among identity-based groups and organizing state of the art performances, to representing Columbia on a global scale by building rockets and advancing student’s career development through networking events, the opportunities you provide for students to carry out their interests are truly transformative.  

Alongside council and governing board leadership, we have advocated to senior administration for the fruitful contributions you are making to the student body. With this in mind, the President and Provost’s Fund has been an invaluable resource to financially support Lerner A/V charges and other costs. In addition, the Campus Collaborative Fund opened to groups to support programming to strengthen our sense of community, while the Columbia Alumni Association Co-sponsorship Fund re-opened this year to foster cross-school events and initiatives. These additional funding sources have been essential to support your expanded programming.

Historic $400,000 Aid Towards Facilities and Securities Fees by University Life
Alongside council and governing board leadership, we have worked with President Armstrong and Dr. Melanie Bernitz, Interim Executive Vice President for University Life, to further support you. I am pleased to announce a historic $400,000 aid by University Life to support facilities and securities costs associated with student group events. The specific purpose of this aid is to expand access to community building activities through student groups, particularly those that are negatively impacted by these types of costs. We appreciate the gracious work by President Armstrong and Dr. Bernitz for this impactful contribution!  

You may ask, what does this mean? Although it is complex, I will attempt to summarize the implications of this funding. 

As you all have seen, ABC allocations this year had to be cut by 18% from ideal numbers due to a limit in the funding ABC received, an unfortunate sentiment shared alongside most governing boards. This is decided at an annual process called Funding at Columbia University (F@CU), in which student life fees from the four undergraduate schools are distributed among the 4 councils, 6 governing boards, and events such as Bacchanal and Senior Week. The factors that the councils consider for funding distributions are multi-dimensional, but one of the obstacles that have limited student group allocations is the high amount of costs associated with facilities and securities fees. 

The associated costs for facilities and securities have experienced significant growth year over year. For this year alone, these costs are projected to reach $400,000. Historically, this is covered entirely through the student life fees, the same funding stream that supports student group allocations and co-sponsorship funds. Even with a 3.7% increase in student life fees this year, this was not enough to offset the increased costs. This year, the additional aid granted by Columbia has allowed us to reallocate the current fund pool for alternative usage. Additionally, there is a new $400,000 in funding set aside to exclusively cover securities and facilities costs as needed by student groups.
 

F@CU leadership recently met to redistribute the initial funds set aside for these costs, which sum up to $338,700. After strongly advocating on your behalf, F@CU stakeholders voted to provide ABC with $90,000, which we have decided to add to our co-sponsorship pool. Currently, we have distributed $126, 304.91 towards co-sponsorships, having $65,063.91 left. After reconciling co-sponsorship transfers (which we will do so very soon), this amount might be slightly higher. 

Please see the remaining facilities/securities fund redistribution amounts:

I would like to uniquely extend my appreciation towards Kavika Krishnan (ESC President), Mariam Jallow (CCSC President), and Mohamad Hemeida (SGB Chair) for their invaluable collaboration in this. We are currently working on ways to find a sustainable solution in regards to this issue.  

ABC Co-Sponsorship Funding 
For the Spring, our biggest priority will be providing financial support to expand access to community building activities. Therefore, I encourage you to reach out to your ABC representative to make sure that the funding you are requesting fits within this mission.  

As a reminder, we will only be transferring co-sponsorship funds depending on the expenditure documentation submitted in this form. We are in the process of doing this and will notify you with the actual amounts transferred.

Historic Student Group Storage for Summer 2025 by Campus Services 
I am pleased to announce that ABC and the Student Governing Board (SGB), have worked alongside Scott Wright, Vice President for Campus Services, to provide free summer storage for student group items for the upcoming 2025 summer. We greatly appreciate the great support that Scott Wright has worked on for Columbia’s student groups, from the P&P Fund to this!

We will provide logistical details in the Spring but have in mind we will be providing bins to store the items your student group requested. Food, lithium-ion batteries, flammable or hazardous materials, and personal items may not be stored. We recommend avoiding the storage of items that are sensitive to temperature and humidity changes.

Student Group Connections with Faculty
We are pleased to have received responses from several faculty members interested to connect with groups like yours. We will be facilitating these connections after the holidays. We appreciate the huge support from Dean Hungerford, Dean Sorett, and Dean Lehecka in moving forward with this project.

E-Board Changes:
Please provide the contact information of any new e-board members following a transition by completing this form. In addition, make sure that any new e-board members are added to your group's grouper email. 

Spring 2025 Town Hall
This is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, January 29, 2025. Yet, please be on the lookout for any changes. We will dedicate a significant portion to jointly engage in aspects that affect student life in general.

Spring Club ReFuel (from Undergraduate Student Life) 
A reminder to groups who transition on the calendar year that your e-board will be responsible for completing Club ReFuel in the Spring semester, if you did not do so in the Fall semester. Any students who are new in leadership positions (and who did not go through Refuel for a different group) will also need to complete Club ReFuel, even if the group completed Club ReFuel in the fall. Details for Club Refuel will be updated over the winter break and will be available here. Please reach out to your adviser with any questions.

We hope you all have a restful break and happy holidays!
 

Very best,

Julian Infante
ABC President

Christina Xiao
ABC Vice President

Armando Gimenez
ABC Treasurer

Alexander Zhao
ABC Secretary