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For many students, clubs are a cornerstone of the university experience, but for club leaders, they represent a constant source of stress. Arranging and managing meetings, scheduling projects, events and more constantly weighs on the minds of e-board members. NYU offers support services to help these clubs run, but the university’s reimbursement process has proven to be a major source of problems. Club members must pay out of pocket for every item needed during meetings, in addition to filling out a complex form before waiting over a month to finally get their money back. In the face of this, NYU continues to uphold a broken system without acknowledging the apparent issues that come with it.
Although NYU provides club officer training workshops which cover the process at the start of each semester, the Center for Student Life has promised, but still does not offer, comprehensive visual guides to the reimbursement process for students. When it’s time to fill out the reimbursement form, club leaders are asked to provide receipts for their purchases along with a dedicated form. In the event that students forget to include any information, the university would ask them to send a bank statement censored to only include information pertinent to the purchase. It’s a seemingly minor concern, but a single mistake can cause around a week-long delay, in addition to the already existing wait time. The Center for Student Life not being able to accommodate reimbursement requests in a reasonable timeframe is a major issue that can be adequately resolved by allocating them more resources and staff.
According to the Center For Student Life webpage and an email from NYU spokesperson Carol Ourivio, the university only has two budget assistants, which is evidently not enough. These assistants are managed by a single budget director to look through, correct, format and then respond to all reimbursement forms. Following this, the forms are finally sent to the Student Life Budget Manager and Executive Director for approval. With over 300 active student clubs, it should be no surprise that students at NYU are left waiting for so long to hear back about their reimbursements.
In practice, the process has consistently created issues for new e-board members, and reimbursement troubles have prevented club leaders from being as proactive with event planning as they’d wish.
“As president of a growing cultural organization, it is unfortunate to know that, at times, we are unable to provide our members with the programming and community events we are known for,” said Tisch senior and Puerto Rican Student Association co-president Enid Acevedo Colón.
When I first became a member of the e-board for the Puerto Rican Student Association, we had one member abroad each semester, leaving three club members to rotate weekly expenses totalling over $100 at times for the entire academic year. This culminated in an incident where I had no more money to spend, since NYU owed me around $300 in reimbursements. The first time I was owed a considerable amount in late reimbursements, I sent an email to the Center for Student Life’s budget unit explaining my situation and asking for an update on two pending reimbursements. That email received no response, and the first reimbursement took three more weeks just to be approved for pickup. This wasn’t the result of extraordinary circumstances — it was just the system running as it usually does: inefficiently.
This is not a new issue facing club leaders. Raymundo Gonzales was president of the Martial Arts Club from 2015-16, and similarly had to wait several weeks before receiving reimbursement. That’s almost an entire decade of the same problem with no new changes, which is especially shocking because other institutions have made student-friendly resources available in that same time. Cornell University, for instance, has recently undergone a change to its reimbursement process for the 2024-25 academic year, providing students with step-by-step video guides and PDF guides.
“I had to wait several, I want to say weeks but it was actually months, to get reimbursed in the mail through check,” Gonzales said. “So, if I spent $300 in any given event in the spring semester, it was very likely that I wouldn’t see my reimbursement until the summer.”
Hiring more employees to look through reimbursements should be the concern here, as understaffing is clearly what’s preventing the process from running any faster or smoother. Having more staff allows more students to get their money back within a reasonable amount of time, all while lightening what could be an immense burden on the handful of current employees. With the high cost of living in New York City and going to a university with a higher than average tuition, students do not need any further strain on their financial resources, and fixing a system that constantly leaves them with empty pockets is overdue.
Contact Sebastián Prats-Fernández at [email protected]
