Last month, at a Graduate Student Association Senate meeting, a yellow packet titled “Your Graduate Student Activity Fee at Work” was distributed. The packet was full of documents pertaining to graduate student fee spending: receipts, copies of encumbrance requests, crossed out budgets and circled numbers.
When the senators saw it, the tone of the meeting changed. “It was a mob scene,” said GSA Vice President Jillian Flood.
President Aubrey Balcom spent $2,177.78 on a conference trip to Seattle, as evidenced by receipts he submitted for reimbursement—a trip approved with a $500 budget.
According to the documents, Balcom spent $230 per night on a hotel in Seattle, while hotels listed on the conference’s website offered rooms from $40-$109. He rented a car and drove it 800 miles over five days for $434, when a hotel shuttle would have sufficed. He drank $25 in booze to wash down a $25 rib-eye steak.
German GSA President Andreas Stier was appalled. “I’m a PhD student—I have no money to waste. I hate this behavior.”
Balcom did not return a Saturday phone call for comment.
He paid for it all on his card, and then was reimbursed for it all, forcing graduate students to foot the bill. Faced with impeachment, Balcom resigned in December.
UB students are no strangers to the alleged abuse of their student activity fees. The Undergraduate Student Association has been criticized for its spending in recent years.
Unlike those revelations, this scandal resulted in the resignation of President Balcom, and may mean big changes for the GSA. It may mean the dissolving of the GSA altogether.
Flood, who said she was conservative in her expenditures, spent nearly $300 more than the $500 authorized. But she stayed in the conference-reserved hotel ($109 per night) for only two nights, and flew on a discount airline. Most of her food receipts were under $10; the only serious splurge in her records was a meal she ate with Balcom, steak dinners at $80 each.
According to her receipts, this conference would be difficult to attend with a $500 budget. She said this budget was a result of a temporary cutback on Executive Affairs, a result of overspending on the Dalai Lama this past fall. GSA also cut back on money for new scholarly publications from various departments.
“We had to cut Executive Affairs from $6,000 to $1,000,” Flood said, “The money encumbrance was money from that line.” Executive Affairs was cut along with the GSA’s magazine, The Quill, and various office positions.
This year, a referendum vote will be held at the end of the semester, to decide whether or not to continue the mandatory student fee, and thus the GSA itself. “I’m worried,” Flood said.
When asked if she likes her job, Flood replies quickly and candidly—“I did.”
She went on, “I got in to make changes in positive ways. I feel like this [scandal] overshadows what I’ve done in the past. It’s hard to enjoy it right now.”
Flood feels GSA accomplished a lot in the past year and a half. She met with the Graduate School to discuss the logistics of iPrint when it was in the development process. She had plans of building a Flint Community House where graduate students could be together. She would bring those ideas back to the senate and “try to be as transparent as possible.”
Plus, she gives out “crazy money.” “We give out childcare scholarships, for students to put their kids in school while they get their degrees.” She says she came under pressure to cut the program, but refused.
Andreas Stier has another point of view.
“UB is ranked number ten for international enrollment in the nation, but GSA spends only $4,000 on international clubs. When you spend that little and have two people going on a conference,” he says, referring to Balcom and Flood’s trip, “the proportionality isn’t right.”
Stier stresses that he is a PhD student, without money to waste on his colleagues’ conferences. “It’s only $1,000,” he says, “but the German Club gets $500 [a year] and [the officers] overspend $1,500—that would fund three clubs.”
Stier says the executive board of GSA has lost his trust. “If it were up to me, the whole E-board would be gone.”
The November conference cost more money than the yearly budget for many clubs, which, looking at GSA minutes, is consistent with GSA policy. In the December senate meeting, it was discussed that GSA spends $405,500 on running the organization, and gives only $274,291 in direct student support.
On January 2, Ronald Piaseczny was appointed acting president of GSA by the executive board. His qualifications appear extensive in a letter he posted on the GSA website (gsa.huffalo.edu).
Stier was disappointed. “He’s from the same department as the previous president. He just knows the current E-board. It’s not kosher.”
But Flood says many clubs suggested Piaseczny and that he knows how to run the office. “He will be able to carry on what we’ve done.”
Still, getting graduate students to trust their student government again may not be a simple task. Flood says there’s a chance that she and Treasurer Saaket Varma will be impeached in this Wednesday’s senate meeting.
Balcom, as Flood has said in the past, has made some enemies. But in the December edition of the GSA newsletter, The Echo, he wrote a letter in hopes of attracting the trust of the students.
He wrote of increasing conference funding to $85,000, making conferences available for all graduate students, and continued with a seemingly reassuring statement: “While you may wonder what the President of the Graduate Student Association does, given that many of you only see me at the monthly Senate meetings and GSA sponsored events, many things I do happen in the background and steer the overall strategy of the organization.”
