Promises of brotherhood and responsible spending at forefront of cabinet’s mind
For many students at Wabash, the details and actions of the Student Senate often get buried in their chronically full inboxes. However, Student Body President Anthony Donahue ’25 and his cabinet made waves last spring for winning the election on the back of a successful dark horse campaign. The executive team, composed mostly of student-government outsiders, began their administration this Monday, August 26, and they have big ambitions.
The cabinet has set quite a few goals for their term. First among these is delivering on their campaign promise of promoting more brotherhood around campus, with the vision of restoring Wabash to the campus environment that preceded the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our main goal is just to promote more brotherhood,” said Jonah Billups ’25. “We want to keep people on campus, [we’re] trying to get people closer.”
Such a broad goal is difficult to measure, and Billups acknowledges that it would be difficult to use any specific metrics to track whether that goal is being met or not.
“I feel like it’s subjective, but sometimes you just feel it,” said Billups. “My freshman year, I just felt that the campus was super close…and I haven’t necessarily felt that the past couple of years.”
But how does this cabinet plan on creating that feeling of brotherhood that Billups remembers from freshman year? Their solution: events.
“We want at least one big event every month,” said Billups. “We just had a comedy show last weekend.”
Besides the comedy show, Wabash Always Laughs, there have been mentions of concerts outside of National Act and weekend events like Back to Bash.
Outside of focusing on campus solidarity, Treasurer and Chairman of the Audit and Finance Committee (AFC) Broderick Frey ’26 hopes to continue being transparent and responsible with the Student Senate budget, mirroring the previous Senate treasurer Liam Grennon ’24.
“We’re being, some might say, somewhat strict with the money right now,” said Frey ’26. “But that’s because last year, there were a lot of unused funds in clubs…so at the end of the year we had a surplus.”
The AFC is already acting on this stricter approach. Outside of Senate-related budgets, such as Senate committees and the Student Senate fund itself, only three clubs on campus – the Dork Club, the Rugby Club and The Bachelor – received full funding for their initial budget requests.
“Dork Club got full funding because when the AFC team and I looked at their events, they had dates… and detailed descriptions for their events,” said Frey. “There were other clubs that didn’t have deep descriptions of all of their events. I’m just saying, ‘send it back with more information, we want this to get passed, we want events on campus.’”
Frey and the AFC approved enough funding for most clubs to hold an initial callout meeting, on the condition that attendance records were taken to justify funding the rest of the budget.
“What the AFC team and I were trying to do was see the first meeting [of these clubs],” said Frey. “We know it’s going to have high attendance, because these are well-respected clubs and organizations. We just want to see their first meeting and then see their events be planned.”
Outside of funding for National Act and Student Senate operations, approximately $55,000 of $200,000 was allocated. While the budget is being run relatively tight, the transparency of the AFC was called into question during the initial meeting of the Senate.
According to the Policies and Guidelines of the Audit and Finance Committee, Section 2.05, AFC recommendations should be easily accessible to the student body. Section 2.06 also indicates that AFC recommendations should be sent out 48 hours prior to Senate meetings in order to give ample time for senators to review the recommendations.
However, as of the first Student Senate meeting on August 26, 2024, the student body had yet to receive a copy of AFC recommendations, depriving many club leaders of a chance to argue their case to the Student Senate. Similarly, AFC recommendations were sent to individuals with an official role within the Senate approximately 35 minutes before the meeting’s start time of 7:30 P.M, rather than the required 48 hours.
“It was a miscommunication between me and Vic Lindsay,” said Frey. “We met on Friday [the weekend before] and we weren’t able to meet again until Monday morning at 9 A.M.. It was just that the passing of powers wasn’t done fully right away.”
While Frey never clearly indicated where miscommunication occurred, Billups assured that the error would be corrected for the weeks following.
“[The recommendations] are supposed to be sent out 48 hours in advance, and they know that they made that mistake,” said Billups. “That’s going to be corrected next week.”
This mistake plays into some students’ worries about how little experience Donahue’s cabinet has within the Student Senate, as Frey is the only member with previous experience in the senate room. However, Billups is certain that their team will adapt.
“For us, it’s really just getting down how the flow of the meeting goes,” said Billups. “Ben Cody ’26 helps us out with keeping everything on task, and I think eventually Anthony will get to that point where he can also do the same thing. [But] I think we are all comfortable.”
While an adjustment period is necessary for such newcomers, students can hope that as outsiders to Student Senate, the new cabinet can accomplish one of their other primary goals: ensuring that students know about the many planned events on campus, such as concerts and euchre tournaments.
“One of our main goals is to make people aware of different things going on across campus,” said Billups. “There are so many times where people don’t know about an event until the day of.”
This was seen in the recent Wabash Always Laughs event, a comedy show held on August 24 in the Fine Arts Center. Up until the day of the event, RSVPs were relatively low, until a wave of students claimed tickets hours before the event started.
Both the effort to have more events and the push for awareness about these events play into the current cabinet’s overarching goal of restoring the brotherhood that Billups remembers so fondly. But ultimately, it’s up to the men of Wabash to do our part in restoring our brotherhood.
“On a Saturday, if you have nothing to do and we’re having an event, come out,” said Billups. “You’re going to make new friends, you’re going to enjoy your time.”