The Forum

Note: Some information in this article has been corrected by a later article. See the corrections here.

On October 4, STLCC hosted the “Student Organization Summit,” a virtual meeting over Microsoft Teams. All Club leaders and advisors were encouraged to attend, including Fine Arts Club president Tiffani Buckley and faculty advisor Christopher Day, assistant professor of General Fine Arts. According to Day, Campus Life manager Dwayne Morgan and Student Activities Assistant Melanie King, relayed a new policy enacted by the STLCC Board of Trustees to those in attendance. The most notable of these new policies to the student body were the changes to club field trip rules. Buckley explained, "non-local travel” was limited to five people per trip per semester–including president and vice-president of these clubs, which, once accounted for, narrows the amount of other club members allowed on a trip to three.

Along with this, non-local travel now must be requested between 8-12 weeks in advance. The definition of “non-local travel” was also up in the air for several weeks following the initial meeting, with many, including Day, assuming it meant anything out of state; since then, Buckley has updated the Fine Arts Club that non-local travel has been labeled as anything outside of St. Louis City and St. Louis County. Local travel only requires 3 weeks' notice to be approved by Campus Life and has no member limit.

Policy on rental cars for traveling has changed as well. According to the STLCC “Travel Guidelines Handbook,” located under Campus Life on the STLCC website, “College vans are no longer available,” and students should instead rely on Enterprise Rent-a-Car for finding a vehicle. This handbook, though, seems to be outdated. Buckley explained that clubs are now encouraged to rent vehicles from STLCC for “insurance purposes,” and other methods of renting vehicles are discouraged.

For many, this decision on club trips came out of left field, but rising activities costs and budget concerns have been on STLCC’s corporate radar for quite some time now. On the YouTube channel “STLCC Board of Trustees Channel,” live recorded public sessions are posted in full. Quarterly financial reports for the STLCC district are presented by Mark W. Swadener, CPA, MBA, vice chancellor for finance and chief financial officer within these public sessions.

In the May 16, 2024, live session, Mark with the financial report stated “College and student activities ... are up significantly on the expenditures and transfers. This is for student related travel and field trips ...” Mark followed up on this comment in the Sept, 29, 2024 Board of Trustees public session, saying, “Increase in expenditures in college and student activity primarily relates to food and also to field trips.”

These increases, though, could be because club expenditures were at near-zero in 2020, a fact Mark with the financial report acknowledges in the May 16 Board of Trustees public session.

So, why was it specifically club field trips that were cut down on? Did they really pose such a threat to the budget? Well, maybe not yet, but they could. If a significant portion of a club is attending an out-of-state club trip, they’d likely need to rent a bus, as was the case with a planned trip of the Fine Arts Club. According to Buckley, the cost of renting a bus for their round-trip outing to Chicago would have been nearly $5,000–the entirety of the Fine Arts Club’s budget. If their plan for a trip to Chicago moved forward, Buckley would almost certainly have to submit a plea asking for more funds.

This issue would be faced by nearly every student organization at STLCC; the board, perhaps trying to avoid potentially tens of thousands of dollars of funding requests for field trips, is preemptively rejecting those with potentially large expenses through their new regulations. By only allowing five people per trip per semester, the biggest vehicle a club will need to rent is a van. Limiting the amount of people allowed on trips also causes hotel expenses to go down, food and drink costs to go down, and–I assume–the undefined insurance costs to go down as well.

For more information regarding these new policies, contact Morgan or King in the Student Center on the FV Campus, or DMorgan@stlcc.edu.