As student fees climb even higher, The Minuteman has learned that Student Bridges – a UMass agency whose $172,000 budget is allocated by the Student Government Association from the mandatory annual student activity fee paid by every undergraduate -- spent a significant portion of its budget on lavish dinners, wild parties and local hotel rooms.
Student Bridges claims to be a college preparatory pathway and tutoring program for low-income and minority children, but according to financial expenditure logs obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by The Minuteman, the organization spent thousands on frivolities, such as $10K worth of food during the 2008 Fiscal Year alone-- including one shocking $2,100 tab racked up during a single night of revelry at Salsarengue Restaurant and Seafood in Holyoke.

In addition to food, Student Bridges blew an outrageous $7,954 on rental cars, $1,850 on hotels, $2,840 on bus transportation, and $1,918 on party supplies, t-shirts, and personalized promotional items.

The group operates under the guise of a community service organization, but their members are far from volunteers. Instead, Student Bridges is made up of paid student “interns” hired at the discretion of Undergraduate Programmatic Coordinator and out-going SGA Commuter Area Governor Vanessa Snow. Some of these interns are paid up to $10 an hour – which added up to an exorbitant $33,400 in student activity fee money last year alone.

In addition, Student Bridges “interns” are eligible to receive four UMass undergraduate honors credits in exchange for “engaging with the community” once or twice a week.

As is widely known, a large contingent of paid SGA Executive Branch officers and cabinet-level officials maintain close ties to either the Senate’s ALANA Caucus or the Student Bridges program.  Prominent in this group are outgoing-SGA President Malcolm Chu, Student Bridges Undergraduate Coordinator and SGA Senator Vanessa Snow, Graduate Coordinator Mishy Leiblum, and board member Shane Coleman.  Additionally, Orchard Hill Senator Ben Thompson, who agreed to meet with the Minuteman to discuss this article only in the presence of “private legal counsel,” also serves on the Student Bridges board, and, as an SGA Senator, helps determine its colossal annual funding level.

More specifically, this past year while numerous financially strapped registered student organizations (RSOs) struggled to even operate with an average annual budget of less than $5,000 -- and 21 of these RSOs saw their budgets slashed – Student Bridges enjoyed a $50,000 increase in their student activity fee allocation, despite the fact that they were unable to quantify any statistically measurable accomplishments, such as the number of students it mentors and those who attend college or even finish high school, to the SGA.
Although the stated mission of Student Bridges is to “increase college access and success for underrepresented students,” thus far, the group has presented no data to document its purported successes or indicate that, through its efforts, even one student has been accepted into college -- let alone UMass Amherst.

“As of right now [the success of Student Bridges] would be very difficult to quantify because a lot of the work they’re doing is with middle school students,” said Shaun Robinson, the Speaker of the SGA.

Further disenfranchising to other university-funded student groups is the fact that Student Bridges has only been in independent operation since 2006, yet has the largest budget of any student group on campus. Traditionally, student group funding has been based on proven longevity and activity; for Student Bridges, funding appears to be based on having friends in the SGA -- including out-going President Malcolm Chu, who sits on the Student Bridges advisory board, and the aforementioned Thompson, the student senator.
The only fee-funded group on campus with a larger budget than Student Bridges is the Student Legal Services office -- and they pay a team of board-certified attorneys whose services are available to all fee-paying students on campus, not a select group of Holyoke middle school students with no connection to the university and which yield no enhancement to student life at UMass.
The need for an outreach organization like Student Bridges has also raised questions. A group strikingly similar to Student Bridges called the Skills, Training, and Enrichment Program (STEP) is already in place in Holyoke middle schools. The public program, which is funded by the city, touts itself as “an academic support program for students from the seventh and eights grades in Holyoke,” making Student Bridges seem superfluous. Students on campus agree. “That’s outrageous and redundant,” said Prateek Katti, a Freshman Chemical Engineering major. “I don’t want my fee money funding such a program.”

As noted earlier, after several requests for comment, Student Bridges spokesman and SGA Senator Ben Thompson agreed to discuss the agency’s finances only with private legal counsel present.  Given the SGA’s illustrious and successful recent history of combating dissent and opposition with intimidation tactics, we respectfully declined.

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