In a special presentation at Wednesday night's Duke Student Government meeting, President Matt Slovik announced the discovery of nearly $140,000 in unspent funds that has been accumulating in DSG accounts over the past five to seven years.
The money came from undergraduates' student activities fees, and past years' DSG officers failed to keep track of each years' unspent funds, Slovik said. He initiated an audit of all DSG accounts last spring on the advice of immediate past Executive Vice President Justin Ford, Trinity '03.
"It seems that this was an oversight, and a failure in the past to accurately transfer appropriate funds," Slovik told the Senate. "It does not appear that any money has been moved in an unauthorized manner."
Treasurer Quinton Walker's analysis of the accounts yielded alarming results, Slovik reported: $14,000 in an old administrative account designated for DSG's former full-time administrative staff member, who was released from her position three years ago; $60,000 in depreciation funds for student organizations, which are set aside each year so that those groups can periodically replace technological equipment but which have never been used; $30,000 in 14 accounts that are effectively inactive; and $30,000 to $35,000 left in unmonitored accounts.
Much of the money had been sitting in balance-forward accounts, where student groups' leftover funds are deposited at the end of the year. Each year the Student Organization Finance Committee distributes DSG's portion of the activities fee to various student groups, which each have their own account within the Office of Student Activities and Facilities. Since those groups are non-profit and cannot keep their excess funds, the money is rolled over into catch-all accounts that have not been factored into past DSGs' budgets.
The oversights were a result of DSG's complex fund management system, officers said.
"We have 20 fund codes all held under DSG's name, but they're never brought together as one DSG balance," Walker explained, adding that he has begun to maintain a comprehensive budget balance and that he will work with next year's treasurer to make sure the practice is kept up.
Although OSAF has no role in the allocation of DSG's funds, the office does maintain all of the student group accounts at the University. OSAF staff see transactions as they come through, but it does not evaluate groups' financial status on a broader level, so it was not aware of DSG's fund accumulations, Director of Student Life Gregg Heinselman said.
"Typically, what you would see is some type of quarterly or annual audit that would address these issues," he said after the meeting. Heinselman, who joined OSAF in the fall, added that he was not sure if such a review is currently the standard practice, but that the office should conduct some sort of audit or administrative review at the end of each fiscal year.
For the time being, the money will be put into a trust, and any distribution will have to come as a directive from the Senate, Slovik said. The current trustees are Slovik, Walker, Executive Vice President Cliff Davison, SOFC Chair Kristin Jackson and Chief of Staff Pushpa Raja.
"The point of this is to safeguard the students' money," Slovik added. "The money is the students', and it will remain the students'."
With the exception of the depreciation funds, which have already been allocated to their respective groups for equipment replacement, none of the money in the trust has yet been earmarked for spending. The trustees have come up with some possible uses, including subsidizing the cost of tents and seating for student groups' events or offsetting the cost of University bartenders for on-campus keg parties.
Heinselman also noted that it was "most definitely" a possibility for the trust to serve as a buffer against further student activities fee increases, although to his knowledge there would not be a raise in next year's fee. The fee went up last year from $128 to $167 after two referenda on last spring's DSG executive elections ballot raised the student government's portion of the fee $8.50 and the Duke University Union's portion $11 for each semester.
Although some critics will point to the fund mismanagement as another mark of DSG's purported inefficiency, Jackson was quick to point out that the current officers were the ones who acted to remedy the situation.
"This Executive Committee was responsible for finding the money, for figuring out where it came from and finding a solution for it," she said.
IN OTHER BUSINESS:
The Senate approved three amendments to its bylaws for restructuring and election reform. The most contentious was the reallocation of senators from apportionment by residence location to apportionment by class and a corresponding reduction of the number of senators to just 40--eight from each class and eight at-large.
The second and third amendments, changing the name of the standing committee on Facilities and Athletics to Athletics and Campus Services, with a corresponding change in that vice president's title, and moving the election of sophomore, junior and senior senators to the spring, both passed unanimously.
aFreshman and at-large senators will still be elected in the fall.
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