In Imperial College we trust?

Imperial College Union’s Clubs & Societies Board (CSB) voted to cut its contribution towards the “tours pot” from £9,000 to £0 at its annual budgeting round on Monday. The move, at the recommendation of Deputy President (Clubs & Societies) Monya Zard, was due to a £7,500 increase in funding from the Imperial College Trust.

ICU policy states that tours “further the aims and objectives of a club or society, supporting their core activities beyond which can be achieved through usual day-to-day, week-to-week operations”. The IC Trust, whose activities include “the promotion of charitable purposes for the benefit of the College”, is an independent charity. In recent years the trust has donated £9,000 for sports tours and £10,500 for other tours – a generous total of £19,500.

According to Zard’s October Council paper, the IC Trust met on 26th October 2011 and agreed to increase its contribution from £19,500 to £27,000, although the breakdown of this extra funding between sports and non-sports tours has not yet been made clear. Zard also stated that the increase was down to “continually increasing numbers of tourists” and gave “Heather Jones and the Membership Services Manager” credit for their successful application for extra IC Trust funding.

At the start of the annual club budgeting round, Zard proposed that the amount of money for tours should be decreased, or cut entirely, with the extra cash moved to the general club and society funds (requests for which were around £80,000 over the amount available). She said that there was “extra funding from the IC Trust” for tours. When pushed for the figures, Zard said that she thought that the amount was previously “about £10,000” and was being increased to “something like £18,500” (the absolute increase quoted by Zard being inaccurate to the tune of £1,000). Zard couldn’t even say whether the amount granted by the IC Trust had yet been confirmed, but added that it was pretty much guaranteed.

The motion was passed by CSB with few objections, as the board railroaded through their decisions with no real discussion about the consequences. Other cuts that appeared to be made in an entirely arbitrary manner included cuts to the amounts available to new clubs and projects. In many cases it seemed like CSB members were plucking numbers from thin air, with a worrying lack of discussion about how funds had been utilised in previous years.

As far as the tours budget is concerned, there is real cause for concern. Last year, all £28,500 of tours funding was allocated. If the number of students embarking on tours is really increasing, as suggested by ICU’s application for increased funding, then next year’s decreased pot of £27,000 is likely to be stretched more thinly than ever.

The move could also sour relations between the union and the IC Trust, who have presumably increased the funds available in good faith that the number of tours can now increase. Conversely, all that the extra cash seems to have done is help plug a gap in club and society funding, caused by the redirection of Union subvention to central Union operations. The fact that the benevolence of the IC Trust has led to a £1,500 decrease in funding will surely lead the trust to question exactly why they bother offering this money if no commitment is shown by the Union itself.