Staff Editorial: Red Zone was avoidable
Reporting about the SGA, not a record of it: The Johns Hopkins News-Letter published this and the SGA did not write it, file it, or approve it. The archive holds it because the article itself uses the phrase “student council”.
Summary
- This Johns Hopkins News-Letter article covers the SAC’s emergency “Red Zone” funding rules and the budget figures it reports.
- The News-Letter reported that the SAC created an emergency amendment declaring a financial “Red Zone,” cutting some funding caps by 50 percent, ending funding for non-vital off-campus events and suspending entertainment funding.
- The paper reported that 16–20 new groups were sharing a $415,000 budget that had increased very little from the previous year.
- The article quotes Student Council Treasurer and SAC Chairperson Ben Wardlow as saying, “If it didn't happen in May, it would have happened in September. We realized money was tight and was going to go quickly.”
- According to the article, $290,000 was allocated in April and another $32,184 was allocated in May.
- The reporter writes that the groups began the school year with $47,678, received grants including $13,000 for Gospel Choir and $5,000 for the Hopkins Undergraduate Research Journal, and were left with $25,376.17 for the rest of the year.
- The article adds that Wardlow said the new “Blue Book” policy was “even more fiscally conservative than the Red Book was.”