Loyola’s Student Government Association’s new budget has decreased by $10,000 from last semester.

SGA’s current budget is $175,000, a notable drop from its previous budget of $185,000.

SGA President Bud Sheppard said the reduction is due to the smaller amount of students currently enrolled at the university.

He said that during his freshman year, the class of 2016 had around 900 students. Over the past two years, that number has dropped to around 600 students enrolling per year.

Earlier this week, the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., university president, announced that the university’s budgetary goal was met with the enrollment of 616 incoming first-year students.

Courtney Williams, the associate director of co-curricular programs, said there is an extensive process as to how SGA’s budget is chosen.

“SGA’s budget is decided upon by the executive staff under the direction of the President,” Williams said.

Sheppard said he met with his Director of Finance, Matthew Moldthan, to examine and dissect the budget from last year. Next, they made sure there was enough money available for SGA to accommodate everything that needed funding.

The budget is then emailed to the executive staff.

“It’s crucial to have your executive staff on the same page,” Sheppard said. It is ultimately the executive staff that finalizes the proposed budget.

Sheppard said that the salaries of his executive staff members took a hit this year as well, in order to keep the student organizations’ budgets higher.

He said all allocations are decided upon through Orgsync. Each student organization requests funds through the online database. The organization then fills out the details of the event, including if it is open to members of the student body or just to members of the organization.

“Then the Finance Committee looks over the organization’s requests at their Thursday meetings and decide if it’s an appropriate way to allocate the funds or not,” Sheppard said.

Sheppard confirmed that the $65,000 set aside for student organizations will be allocated evenly and said that the Finance Committee will weigh options before deciding on how much money to allocate to a club to make sure they are “fair.”

Even with the $10,000 drop in this year’s available funds, both Sheppard and Williams said they are very confident with the current budget.

“It gives more to the students and gives us the opportunity for great Third Fridays and other events,” Sheppard said.

Williams said that he is confident SGA will use the budget wisely.

“The executive staff has been very strategic and resourceful with the money given and have excellent ideas to use the budget to continue improving student life,” Williams said.