Steinhardt senior Sky Young spent three years trying to figure out how he could help the university make food more accessible to low-income students. After working with other students and repeatedly reaching out to officers and administrators, Young landed on the Student Government Assembly’s initiative fund to support the food pantry as one of its first major projects.
“We got that application in there as soon as we could,” Young said. “That’s kind of how it all originated.”
Young worked with Steinhardt’s former USG President Tanisha Thakkar to apply for a grant from the initiative fund in late September last year. By early October, the grant had been approved, and the pantry opened to students last March and has received a consistent stream of funding since. Now, the SGA is working to make similar initiatives easier to implement.
Aside from its operational budget, the SGA receives an additional $500,000 annually to support student programming and projects, known as the Initiative Fund. During its first meeting of the fall semester, the student government passed a resolution to further distinguish this funding from its regular budget.
The resolution isolates a committee solely for the Initiative Fund, which previously also oversaw SGA’s Conference Fund, which covers student travel to academic conferences and other events. By separating the two, the SGA can manage core operational costs — such as conference funding and stipends — independently from the larger, innovative projects used for the initiative fund. Daniella Messer, who oversees the fund, told WSN that a high volume of applications for student-led initiatives made it necessary to.
SGA chair Angela Chou said she sought to make the Initiative Fund more accessible and “better accommodate what students really need.” Chou said that the fund sought to prioritize universitywide projects that demonstrate a clear benefit to the student body and the broader NYU community, as opposed to more personal academic projects.
“We’re really ensuring that whatever budget we’re allocating is going right back to the student body and that students have more accessibility to get the full benefits of these budget allocations,” Chou said. “We’re providing more places for students’ voices to be heard, and we didn’t have that before the initiative fund was introduced last year.”
Last year, NYU Law students collaborated with the Office of Student Affairs to successfully secure money from the initiative fund for a highly-requested fridge installation in the student lounge. The fund has also supported the replacement of water fountains at the Kimmel Center for University Life and free transportation services to the airport during school break.
“If there’s anything you notice and it’s impacting students, and there’s students expressing concerns, bring it up,” Young said. “That’s the easiest way to start and go about it.”
Contact Lily Collins and Olivia Ge at [email protected].
