Lab’s budget cuts have had many effects on sports, language programs and more. Club budgets have been cut, too, but have they really caused any extra difficulties in running clubs this year? According to many club leaders, the experience has been largely the same.
“We are grateful to see not as much of an impact toward our budget in terms of the cuts inflicted on different clubs this year. We specifically are looking forward to LabMUNC which is our one-day high school conference hosted by Lab in which we’re packaging most of our budget this year. However, we will most likely be able to break even on the high schools who are registering.”
— Helen Kraemer, Model United Nations
“A lot of our budget goes to travel, so we have had to be careful about where we are going this season and how we are going there. It has made us not go to at least one event we usually would have, which is very unfortunate because that’s a great competition. We are also applying to a lot of grants this year, and if we don’t get those grants, then we might have to enforce more extreme measures.
— Mihir Epel, Robotics“The recertifying process is mostly the same, but the biggest difference from the budget cuts has been the process of reimbursement for club events and things that we buy. It hasn’t really affected us much other than food for club events, but I can understand how it has affected smaller, less popular clubs.”
— Raza Zaidi, Finance club
“F1 in Schools, as a newer club, we don’t receive any funding from the school, and instead, all of our money is raised through corporate sponsorships and crowdfunding, and the process for recertifying and raising money has largely stayed the same other than a change in sponsors here and there.”
— Ayush Mishra, F1 in Schools
“I haven’t really felt (the budget cuts) that much. I wasn’t leading the club last year, but I know that this year we still have the funds we need for the trips that we need to do.”
— Yusuf Arain, Mock Trial
“ASA is funded by the Asian Culture Fund, which isn’t directly funded by Lab, so there actually haven’t been any changes in our club due to Lab’s new budget cuts.”
— Suna Choi, Asian Students’ Association
