Photo Courtesy of Rashad Christie
Florida A&M University’s homecoming has reached its halfway point, and the fun hasn’t even started yet. This week’s event lineup is a solid one, but it took a lot of penny pinching and number crunching from FAMU Student Government Association.
The budget for homecoming was cut down tremendously. In 2015, the homecoming budget amounted to $210,810. This year, the budget came about $24,000 short from the previous year. FAMU SGA worked together to rally up as much money as they could to cover the expenses.
Simone Nisbett, fourth-year business administration student and SGA financer, broke down the total allocation of the funds and the coverage of the money provided.
“We actually allocated in the annual budget $111,573 for homecoming. That account is on a 100 percent release, which means that homecoming gets to spend all that money at once. It’s not on a percentage release like the rest of the A&S funded entities on campus,” Nisbett said.
The total amount of money that was allocated was $186,573. Nisbett also explained how they were able to transfer money between accounts to cover performances and activities.
“We motioned to do budget transfer from the senate allocated account to the homecoming account in the amount of $75,000 to cover the guest and people that will be coming for homecoming,” Nisbett said.
Student body vice president and chair of the homecoming committee Paris Ellis further explained the reason behind the budget cuts.
“The reason why our budget has been cut so drastically is because our enrollment has drop. Even over the past three years, our enrollment has continued to drop,” Ellis said.
Ellis continued to explain when the amount of the enrollment of students decreases, the A&S fees drops as well.
“The more students we have, it’s a whole cycle. The more A&S fees that we have coming through, the more money we have in our budget. That’s our homecoming budget,” Paris said.
Regardless of the budget, SGA still believes that homecoming will be a huge success. Brandon Johnson, SGA Student Senate President, said even though students are looking to have a great time, it is important that students come looking their best and prepared to network because they could easily come across FAMU alumni.
“It is important that students come prepared with their business cards and for ladies to get their hair done and guys get their haircut because they never know who they might run into,” Johnson said.