It’s old news that DCGA’s reserve fund is overflowing with cash, but now they’re doing something about it. As mentioned in last week’s The Denisonian, students are encouraged to propose ideas on how to spend the $800,000 reserve fund (the spending limit now is $500,000). However, many student organizations have felt frustrated by the funding process.

Has DCGA Finance focused too much on following their “guidelines” and not actually understanding why student organizations are requesting certain items?

They need a better long-term perspective on funding, too. D-Day was allocated $100,000 for a one day event, while UPC got $160,000 for programming events for the entire year. Is that fair or sustainable?

Current student activity fees should be used to fund current student activities. It’s our money; it should benefit us while we still attend Denison.

DCGA has been keeping money for too long. Student activity fees from five to ten years ago are just now being used. This shouldn’t be happening.

A reasonable amount for the reserve fund is about $200,000. What we have right now is $600,000 more than that. With the current spending trend, would students ten years from now be sitting on another extra $600,000?

We applaud DCGA’s efforts to be cautious with spending and its new initiative to allow students to spend the reserve fund as they see fit.

We sincerely hope that students take advantage of this new opportunity and submit proposals. Moving forward, DCGA should also consider more efficient funding methods to prevent this accumulation problem from happening again.