Harvard Kennedy School Student Government Cuts Conference Funding After Historic Deficit

The Harvard Kennedy School Student Government will not fund any student-run conferences in the 2024-25 academic year as the group scrambles to cover the $46,000 budget deficit it incurred in the last academic year.

The budget cut is among a slate of new measures — passed over the last month — that mark the newly-elected KSSG’s first significant move since their September elections and the group’s most notable effort to bounce back from last year’s financial scandal.

The new measures include a new agreement allowing both the HKS Office of Student Services and KSSG to review student organization spending, a $5,000 emergency fund in the group’s budget to safeguard against future financial troubles, and a 44 percent cut to KSSG’s administrative budget which slashed funding for snacks at the group’s meetings and reduced funds allocated to KSSG vice presidents and class representatives.

Allan E. Cameron V, the group’s executive vice president, said in an interview with that KSSG has begun to scrutinize its internal budgeting to avoid repeating the deficit incurred last year.

“We were having pretty intensive conversations after the election about how we could structure the budget, get it passed in a timely fashion, and make sure that there is no lapse in services,” he said.

Cameron added that the group passed their budget for the 2024-25 academic year within two weeks of assuming office — at least two weeks faster than in previous years.

Individual student groups have hosted over a dozen conferences at the Kennedy School with high-profile speakers in years past, including the India Conference, the German American Conference, and the China Conference — which was disrupted by an anti-Chinese Communist Party protest in April.

Despite the budget cuts to student-run conferences and KSSG, funding for student organizations will remain the same this year.

Cameron acknowledged that the decision to cut conference funding was “challenging,” but said that the conferences could remain afloat by relying on external sponsorships, funding from academic centers at HKS, and ticket sales.

“It doesn’t mean that the conferences will not survive, because they’re able to receive the external funding,” he said, adding that alternative funding sources often provide “much more than what the KSSG support would have been.”

Cameron said KSSG has been particularly focused on improving its relationship with the Office of Student Services, which was strained last year due to KSSG concerns that the OSS should be “more transparent” regarding the distribution of student group funding. In meeting minutes reviewed by The Crimson, the group lamented in April that “admin just doesn’t like showing KSSG numbers.”

The group’s new policy — under which student organization leaders will be required to submit expense receipts to both KSSG and the OSS — is intended to prevent situations where the OSS’s distribution of funds for a student group does not align with what KSSG had approved.

Cameron added that KSSG is also currently negotiating with the OSS to reduce KSSG’s contribution to quorum calls, monthly social gatherings for students across different degree programs funded in part by the student government.

“We’re paying for a substantial amount of quorum calls — it’s almost 50/50 — but we feel like it should be more student services,” he said.

Correction: November 18, 2024

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that changes to the Harvard Kennedy School Student Government’s budget cut finding for food and drinks by 57 percent. In fact, the changes cut 44 percent of KSSG’s administrative budget.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.