SAMUEL LEWANDOWSKI
Special to The Leader
Despite COVID-19, the Fredonia Student Association Office remains in operation.
According to their general manager/accountant, Vince Gugino, the Student Association is operating with staff and only coming to the office when necessary.
“The student executives are only available through email for obvious reasons,” said Gugino.
“The General Assembly and other committees have not conducted business since we were forced to leave in March.”
One of these student executives includes senior biology major and president of the Student Association, Jillian Beard.
Beard said that groups and activities are currently at a standstill until students return to campus.
She also said that clubs who previously held their executive board elections in the spring are still doing so online in order to stay on track for the fall.
Outside of this, Beard said no activities are happening.
Gugino said that most group budgets have been suspended, and the Student Association is only paying recurring charges and bills for previously incurred activities.
In regard to students, Beard and Gugino said that half of the student activity fee is being refunded.
“The University refunded/credited all students half their spring fees, including the Student Activity Fee, and this necessitated that SA return to the university over $222,000,” said Gugino.
“These funds are what give groups the ability to hold activities and make purchases.”
Gugino said that suspending budgets and activities wasn’t an operative decision, but given the circumstances, was a necessary action.
“Without the activity fee, there are no funds for activities and with almost no students on campus, there is no one holding or planning any activities,” said Gugino.
As a result of not having activities since students left in March, Gugino said that clubs and extracurriculars have been severely impacted.
In addition to this, Gugino said services like the Campus and Community Bus were also greatly impacted.
Since there are still around 120 students living on campus, Gugino said SA felt it was necessary to provide some form of transportation to these students as well as community members that depend on the bus.
However, Gugino said that the bus is funded through several sources including the student activity fee.
With the loss of said fee, Gugino said hours of operation had to be greatly reduced.
“We are hopeful that things will return to normal in the fall,” said Gugino.
“But we realize that we may have to make some changes to accomodate for social distancing guidelines as they apply to club activities and meetings.”
Gugino said that next semester marks the beginning of a new budget year, and that, so long as the school returns to normal conditions, there will not be any financial impact on clubs.
If fall semester follows the present distant learning format, Gugino said that they will most likely be asked to refund some part of the activity fee revenue.
“In this case, we will probably be required to suspend budgets and activities again,” said Gugino.
“Budgets do not roll over from one year to the next so any unused funds will be unusable to groups after year end. Any funds that clubs have in their fundraising accounts do rollover to the next year and those funds are available to clubs regardless.”
Despite this, Gugino said that individual students should not be impacted financially.
“The college is refunding half their fees and any payment or purchase that students have made, for a club specific activity that was canceled, should be refunded as well,” said Gugino.
Gugino said that there are currently no concrete plans for next semester, but that SA will be discussing the matter more in the near future.
Beard also said that SA has been working on figuring out the details before moving into any big decisions.
“Right now we have more of a ‘wait and see’ approach,” Gugino said.
“During the summer, we should have more information regarding any restrictions on operations, activities and group gatherings.”