After several weeks of uncertainty, the Facilitators for Allocating Student Taxes (FAST) received its annual budget from the College’s Finance Office on Sept. 23. FAST has $310,818.49 currently available for it to us and will receive another allocation of approximately $100,000 this spring.
That total of around $400,000 is roughly in line with last year’s budget and significantly more than the total originally communicated to the FAST board by the Finance Office at the start of the semester. Earlier this month, when its budget remained unclear, FAST was forced to delay its allocations to Registered Student Organizations (RSO) and later issued unusually small RSO budgets. Now, it plans to fulfill a higher volume of supplemental budget requests than usual to partially make up for the lower starting budgets.
At the beginning of the fall semester, FAST was notified that the Finance Office was running behind schedule and their budget would be late, according to Elijah Adu ’27, an at-large representative on FAST. Usually, FAST begins the school year knowing their yearly budget, Adu told the Record.
On Sept. 5, FAST received a follow-up email from the Finance Office stating that their budget would be $298,871.20, a 36-percent decrease from last year, Adu said. Last year’s total FAST budget of $463,980.29 was already a significant decrease from the previous year’s allocation of $679,434.48.
Adu said that the group immediately recognized the importance of notifying the community about the budget decrease. “We needed to communicate this to the campus,” he said. “That way we don’t get blamed when we start denying people’s budgets because we have simply less money.”
“We thought this was the final number,” he continued.
Over the next two weeks, the Finance Office communicated different figures for the FAST budget multiple times, Adu said, varying it by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Following a meeting between the Office of Campus Life (OCL) and the Finance Office on Sept. 16, FAST received an email from the Finance Office revising the budget back to the original figure of $298,871.20. OCL noted that this number might increase, but only by a still-undetermined amount, Adu said.
Under the assumption that their budget would be close to $300,000, FAST began to approve many RSO budgets last week, offering many student groups unusually conservative sums.
In response, some RSOs expressed serious concern about their ability to operate and host major campus events with this budget.
For All Campus Entertainment (ACE), the original budget allocated by FAST this year would have seriously impacted the club’s ability to continue to host school traditions including Pub Nights, Casino Nights, and even Spring Fling.
“The initial number that [FAST] gave us was going to be 50 percent of what we typically get,” Ella Bruff ’26, co-president of ACE, told the Record. “And then we were like, ‘Do we have to cut a bunch of year-round things? Do we have to pay for Spring Fling [with this budget]? Where do we find that? Where do we cut the money from?’”
FAST’s constitution entitles ACE to 28 percent of its budget, FAST performance group representative Leo Margolies ’26 explained to the Record. Rather than actively deciding to reduce ACE’s budget, FAST merely allocated the standard proportion of the lower figure from the Finance Office, Margolies said.
When FAST receives its additional funds in the spring, ACE will be entitled to the same 28 percent of that money. Adu said that while ACE’s funding will not necessarily reach previous levels, it will be up to them to decide how to allocate it.
Leadership of the Williams Outing Club (WOC) expressed similar fears upon learning of FAST’s apparent budget cuts. “At first we got an email from FAST saying we would have $20,000,” WOC President Sam Drescher ’26 told the Record. “Two years ago, we had $40,000. Last year, we had $32,000.”
Drescher stressed that this new total would have significantly hampered WOC’s ability to sustain its programming, given that the club had already cut events like its outdoor film festival and reduced the bus service to Jiminy Peak during Winter Study in response to last year’s budget cut. “[That figure] barely covers Winter Study buses, which is probably our biggest outward-facing service to the community,” Drescher said.
WOC’s concerns were alleviated when they successfully petitioned for a higher allocation from FAST. “Luckily, after we found a clause in the FAST Constitution saying that WOC is entitled to a minimum of $34,000, we got that,” Drescher said. “Still, WOC is operating with a very bare-bones budget.” As dictated by their bylaws, FAST shifted money from competitive clubs like Moot Court and the Debate Union to WOC, Adu said.
Aside from WOC, FAST cut budgets for most other RSOs, largely by eliminating all funding for food and catering. If RSOs want to purchase food for events, they can submit a supplemental budget request, according to Adu. Thus, RSOs will be eligible for significantly more supplemental money than usual this year.
The rationale behind the change is to encourage more conscious spending. “We’d rather RSOs buy things that will last,” Adu said. “If you buy someone ski patrol equipment, I assume they can ski for four years and help keep people safe in a way that [RSO] board dinners do not.”
“Seventy percent of all FAST money last year was spent on food,” he added.
Throughout this period of budget uncertainty, the Finance Office and OCL consistently communicated to FAST that there might be more money for them but that the total was uncertain, Adu said. On Tuesday, FAST received the final clarification on their budget in an email from the Finance Office, which provided the $310,818.49 figure and informed FAST of roughly $100,000 to follow at the beginning of the spring semester, Adu said.
This additional funding will be the spring semester revenue from the student activity tax, a component of the College’s comprehensive fee. The lump sum’s total value is uncertain because the College doesn’t yet know exactly how many students will be studying on campus and paying the comprehensive fee, Adu said. In previous years, FAST received its funding total in the fall, he said. Adu is unsure why the procedure changed this year.
In an email to the Record, Senior Budget Manager Jaime Campbell attributed the series of delays to a miscommunication, which she said is now resolved. “There was a delay this year in finalizing the FY25 numbers for FAST, but they now have that number,” Campbell wrote. “There seems to have been miscommunication around the FY24 and FY25 carry-forward numbers (unspent funds from prior years FAST would have started FY25 and FY26 with, respectively), which should have been resolved with the email to them [on Tuesday] morning.”
“I provided an initial number to FAST, found an error, and re-sent the corrected version today,” Campbell continued. “Over the past few weeks there were meetings and communications between Finance, FAST, and the Dean of the College’s Office to ensure we were all on the same page and understanding of the balances and processes; including my error and subsequent correction.”
FAST’s total funding has decreased sharply in the past several years as surplus money left over from the COVID-19 pandemic was gradually spent down. “[The surplus] reset some expectations for RSOs about the levels of funding that would be available,” Associate Vice President for Student Affairs Jeff Malanson told the Record.
However, this year, the annual student activity tax increased by $20, and $17 out of that $20 was specifically allocated to FAST funding, according to Malanson. So while Adu said he does not know what the final total of FAST’s money will be at the start of the spring semester, he believes the decline due to still-diminishing rollover funds may be mitigated by this increase.
This will likely be an “incredibly normal” year for FAST’s funding totals, Adu said. “It has just been an absolute roller coaster to get here,” he added.
Hugh Kane contributed reporting.
