By Elizabeth Stapleton
Social Media Editor

At the Jan. 30 Student Association meeting, it was brought to light that the current WWPV e-board had some outstanding fines and fees to resolve. Initially unaware of what the total costs would be, the e-board was not prepared to deal with the possibility of being shut down.

Every year, the WWPV e-board is required to pay licensing fees, royalties, and engineering staff, which comes out to $5,163. They have legal obligations to pay these contracts and if they don’t, they would have to face legal action. On top of all that, there were a few other expenses including fixing the record player, getting cleaning supplies for the station, and having artists J Bengoy play at Turtle Underground, said Paul Stumpf ’19, News and PSA Director of WWPV.

The student-organized campus radio station, WWPV, is run almost exclusively with student DJs and staff. The radio station is under the control of the e-board, which is mainly comprised of a group of St. Michael’s students. The SA allots a certain amount of money to the e-board every year as they do to every other club on campus.

Originally allocated $5000 in Sep. 2017, the WWPV e-board petitioned for $2000 in additional funding, which was still below what they had received in past years, to help cover licensing fees and engineering bills for the year. Nicole Ouellette ’19, the SA financial secretary said they were prepared for other clubs to also pitch for additional funding due to the fact that the SA was granted a larger General Reserve than they were last year.

According to Stumpf, a few different factors led to the instability. Some of the e-board’s fees are quarterly, and sometimes the school would pay the bill that they would receive during the summer without informing the e-board members. Stumpf also said that there was a lack of communication between the previous e-board station manager and current station manager, Amy Garlesky ’18.

“Since the current WWPV station manager, [Amy Garlesky ’18] also happens to be a member of our Student Association Executive Board, I’ve been in constant communication with WWPV leadership this year, which helped tremendously in coming up with a solution to pay for expenses associated with keeping the station up and running.” Ouellette said. “Leadership transitions are hard on any club, and the lack of communication between the old and new WWPV e-boards created a bit of disconnect when it came to expenses that were to be expected throughout the school year.”

“Amy [Garlesky] has done an amazing job handling this problem, working with Nicole [Ouellette], as well as setting a precedent for when the new e-board takes over next year” Stumpf says and adds, “This will not happen again.”

Ouellette further explained that in the past, there was never a uniform way that required clubs to keep track of their spending. Last school year, Zack Maroon ’18, the former Secretary of Finance who is now the Student Association Vice President, moved all things pertaining to budgeting online to the Google Drive. On the Drive, each club has their own folder that includes a spending log. The spending log has the initial budget allocated to the corresponding club at the beginning of the year, and clubs are able to input what they spend throughout the year. “The hope was to be more transparent about budgeting while holding clubs more accountable.”

This means that since this system hadn’t been used prior to last year, there was no previous way of visualizing expenses that clubs should expect. The Google Drive is put in place to make leadership transitions a lot smoother seeing as future leadership will always have access to past budget proposals and spending logs.
“Now that we know what to expect for fees, we will be requesting the same money for next year’s budget as in years past.” Stumpf said.