Members of the Legislative Body (LB) didn’t know why they were told to wear green to the Macalester College Student Government (MCSG) meeting on Thursday, April 3. When they realized, to much dismay, that nearly all the provided pizzas were pickle pizzas, the reason began to dawn on them.
Chief of Staff Else Gerber ’25 opened the meeting by thanking the LB for dressing on theme and wishing them all a happy pickle week.
She then told the LB to look under their chairs to find a numbered post-it note and used a random number generator to select the winner: First Year Class Representative Lina Solh ’28. The LB urged Solh to give a speech as she was awarded one jar of pickles.
“I wanted to thank everyone,” Solh said to uproarious applause. “I know there was really hard competition, and I know you’re all very sad you didn’t get baby gherkin pickles. But I’ll share with everyone.”
The LB then voted on the changes to the Bylaws and the Election Code discussed at their March 13 meeting. Both amendments passed with 23 in favor.
Next, Financial Affairs Committee (FAC) Chair David Christenfeld ’27 introduced an amendment to move the five percent rollover from the Community Chest Fund into the operating fund, which also passed with 23 in favor.
Christenfeld then asked the LB to approve moving $15,000 from this year’s travel fund to this year’s operating fund, due to a negative balance in the fund. He explained that the bylaws don’t explicitly require an LB vote to transfer funds, but he wants to set that precedent for transfers over $4,000.
Vice President Ryan Connor ’25 asked how often FAC transfers money between funds. Center for Student Leadership & Engagement (CSLE) Associate Director (Leadership & Orientation) Emi Menk answered that FAC first transferred funds last year from capital to travel. Christenfeld further explained that the recent funding of the Asian Pacific Islander Desi Americans (APIDA) Gala was the reason the operating fund was low, and that the FAC was expecting April to be a big month for spending operating, rather than travel, funds.
The fund transfer was approved with 24 in favor and one abstaining.
Christenfeld continued with a post-Budget Bonanza update. He announced that FAC had allocated $69,000 to student organizations’ operating funds and had $2,999 left for appeals. He added that currently there are only two appeals, one of which alone is larger than that remaining amount.
“We tried to defer what we could to additional allocations,” Christenfeld said. “So [we deferred] registration costs that wouldn’t come due at the beginning of the year, before additional allocations were due… and then limiting orgs in how many events they could do. Unfortunately, there’s some great events that we just couldn’t fund because we didn’t have the money.”
Christenfeld nevertheless praised FAC’s hard work under difficult circumstances: “We were able to make it so there’s no across the board cuts. I’m super proud of the FAC.”
Next, President Joel Sadofsky ’25 discussed the possibility of raising the student activity fee.
“I think FAC did incredible work with the constraints they were under … but also I do think that the anger at MCSG — not just the anger, the dissatisfaction and understandable disappointment — with the results of Budget Bonanza and org budgeting does and should push us to be solution minded about this whole thing,” Sadofsky said.
He pointed to the increasing discrepancy between the amount student organizations request and the amount FAC is able to give. He explained that the student activity fee was last raised in the 2012-13 academic year to $230, which would be $322.36 today if adjusted for inflation.
He also encouraged the LB to think about the creation of new funds for organizations like forensics and club sports, pointing to the lectures board fund, which was also created in 2012 and allocates money for clubs to host guest speakers. He also clarified that the student activity fee is part of the comprehensive cost of attending Macalester and is factored into financial aid.
“It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not getting done at the end of this year,” Sadofsky said. “I wanted to kick off this conversation now, so that MCSG … can start to talk about what needs to be done because we want everyone who isn’t graduating to be well set up to be able to respond to increasing student activity demand.”
Moving to Cabinet updates, Athletics & Recreation Liaison Ash Granda-Bondurant ’27 announced that Scot Ball had been postponed one week, and Belonging and Accessibility Liaison Willow Albano ’26 highlighted the reorganization of certain liaison roles in MCSG’s Bylaws; they noted that the Belonging and Accessibility Liaison is now the Institutional Equity Liaison, and the Health and Wellness Liaison is now the Accessibility and Wellbeing Liaison.
Lastly, the LB was visited by Program Board (PB) Chair Sofia Vaz ’25, who went through PB’s expenditures for the 2024-25 academic year. She described PB as the “programmatic arm of MCSG” and the “core of campus engagement” and explained that $32 of each student activity fee is allocated into the PB Fund each semester. PB uses this money to put on large events like Winter Ball and Springfest and to co-host events with student organizations.
When asked by Sadofsky what PB would do with more money, Vaz said they would increase collaborations with student organizations and host more cultural and educational events.
The meeting concluded with a reminder about the upcoming candidates forum and Executive Board election.
• scumaran@macalester
