Students discuss budget allocations at SA

By Hongtao Hu     4/15/25 11:06pm

Senate meetings are usually a quiet affair — but this Monday, there was a lively debate over the Blanket Tax Committee’s 2025-26 funding allocations. Rice Women’s Resource Center and ktru waved signs and protested funding cuts to Blanket Tax Organizations, which are funded by the Blanket Tax. 

Blanket Tax funding comes directly from the tuition of students — $85 per student — to support organizations including Beer Bike, Rally Club, RWRC and Student Media. Student Association Senate members and students debated the Blanket Tax Committee’s 2025-26 funding allocations for Blanket Tax Organizations at a Senate meeting April 14. The budget will be voted on during next Monday’s Senate meeting.

RWRC was at the center of the debate in the Kyle Morrow room, as they were approved only $6,000 of the $14,000 they requested. Reasoning given by the Blanket Tax Committee includes claims made that RWRC did not fully spend its budget for fiscal year 2024-25, along with scrutiny regarding the necessity of RWRC’s requested 100% funding increase from $7,000 to $14,000.

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Overall, total funding allocated for all BTOs was $347,305, down from $385,063 last year. BTOs requested $415,152 in total, and received $67,847 less than requested. In the allocations report, the reasoning for the decreased funding was the removal of the Rice Student Volunteer Program from blanket tax status. Additionally, a judicial referral of Civic Duty Rice to University Court means the organization will not receive any of the $4,000 funding it requested.

Blanket Tax surplus money will be used to fund the SA’s Initiative Fund, which SA Treasurer Jackson Darr said was a necessary avenue for funding student activities. The Initiative Fund is an avenue for student organizations to get funding for a new initiative on campus.

“Over 50% of clubs were denied [Student Activities/President’s Programming] funding, and due to the presidential administration cutting academic funding, it’s a concern what SAPP funding will look like next year,” said Darr, a Lovett College freshman. “The student center hasn’t really assured us it will be stable next year, so we want to create an avenue for students who would normally go to SAPP funding to apply through the initiative fund so their club is able to get funding.” 

 In response, RWRC wrote a 31-page report criticizing the budget decisions, calling upon SA representatives to vote no on the allocations. The report said that the increased RWRC budget was necessary for the organization to bring back historical initiatives, such as volunteer retreats. 

In addition, funds would pay for new initiatives, such as a community showcase in the next academic year. The report said the underutilization of funds in 2024 was caused by leadership issues that are now being rectified. 

The report claimed that as the RWRC is a spring-heavy spending organization, they plan to spend the entirety of the fiscal year 2024-25 budget given to them.

“We talked about all the different ways that we have grown this year and all the improvements that we’ve made,” said Sophia Plumb, an outgoing RWRC co-director. “We’ve talked about justifying why last year was an anomaly of a year and just doesn’t represent us as an organization.”

Just before Monday’s SA meeting, the Blanket Tax Committee published a reply to RWRC’s report. This counterstatement wrote that RWRC’s report was inconsistent in claiming that if the allocations did not pass, a delayed budget would not impact the operations of BTOs in the fall. 

The Blanket Tax Committee’s report also said that RWRC underspending both in 2024 and 2025 raised questions on if the increased budget was necessary, and expanded on the ramifications of voting against the allocations. “Voting ‘No’ on the current budget would not just impact RWRC; it would delay funding for hundreds of student organizations,” the report read. 

Incoming RWRC co-director Cheryl Lee said that RWRC had not been sent the response, which was publicly posted at the Senate meeting. She said that RWRC is planning on continuing the conversation with the Blanket Tax Committee.

In an email to college presidents and senators, SA Secretary Cedric Lau wrote that vetoing the budget would cripple BTOs’ spending abilities. 

“If the current budget is vetoed, BTOs will not receive any funding until late October,” wrote Lau, a Duncan College freshman. “This also means that cultural clubs will not be able to access funds from the Initiative Fund until late November — by which time most of the Fall semester will have passed.” 

Last year’s budget was delayed in a similar manner, which SA President Trevor Tobey said was unprecedented.

Published April 9, the proposed allocations did not approve the entirety of many BTOs’ requested funding, including banning all travel expenses, which were cited as “not directly beneficial to the broader student body.”

The basis for this report included streamlining non-essential spending and encouraging comprehensive financial planning.

During Monday’s Senate meeting, the SA voted on their own budget — the 2025-26 allocation — which passed with eight senators abstaining. With the BTO budget proposal still pending, college representatives and BTO members fielded questions to Darr and Tobey.

Darr said that the approved budget cannot be accepted or rejected in parts; if the Senate wants to reject the approved budget, the entire budget will have to be redone.

“Unfortunately, due to the current law and constitution that we have, there are no amendments. The Student Association has to vote to approve it in full or reject it in full,” Darr said.

A major change made to the budget allocation this semester was a complete ban on travel expenses for BTOs. The allocations report quotes Bylaws No. 2101, Section 2.1, cited in the report as Bylaws No. 2102, Section 2, a bylaw that circumscribes Blanket Tax funds to be used to further the interests of students and the Rice community. 

“Travel expenditures fail to meet this standard in both form and function,” the report read. “They serve a small, privileged subset of organizational leadership rather than the broader undergraduate population. They produce limited, indirect and often unmeasurable benefits for the Rice community.”

Chloe Diehl, a ktru station manager, said she did not see the SA provide adequate alternatives for the travel expenses that were cut from the allocations.

“They kept on harping on travel funds and grants, which doesn’t make any sense, nor did they have any back-up resources on where we could find those grants,” said Diehl, a Lovett College sophomore.

In total, the committee allocated $25,000 less than the amount requested for travel across all BTOs, but the report recommended alternative and better suited sources for travel support, such as the Center for Career Development, academic departments and external grants. 

Former Lovett president Andrew Kim said he disapproved of this semester’s budget allocations. 

“Relegating the RWRC to initiative funds is an offense to their status as a BTO,” said Kim, a senior. “The only mechanism that we have right now to check the Blanket Tax [Committee] is this very voting. Voting no next week is the only way to hold them accountable.” 

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