Impressions requests budgetary expansion, SGA bylaws pose barriers to funding
The Maryville College Student Government Association has long served as the primary allocator and manager of funds for MC clubs and organizations.
Most registered MC clubs are student-led, with one academic adviser to help guide students and serve as a liaison to the college. Clubs are funded by the Student Activities Fee.
“[The student activity fee] is a portion of tuition paid by every student that varies annually based on projected enrollment,” SGA Student Body President Austin McKee (‘26) said.
For the 2025-26 academic year, that portion of tuition was around $484 per student. Of that total, half of the Student Activity Fee is given to SGA to distribute to student clubs and organizations, according to McKee.
How much money is allocated to each club varies depending on the amount requested in a submitted budget packet, which all clubs are required to submit in the spring semester for the following academic year. This year, budget packets are due by 5 p.m. on March 23.
“The budget packet is a document that explains the funding priorities and request process for the next fiscal year,” SGA Treasurer Lily Little (‘27) said. “Each club has the opportunity to submit this packet to SGA and the Financial Budgetary Organizational Affairs Committee. The members of FBOAC collaborate with the Dean of Students to review every budgetary packet, ensuring that the money allocated to clubs is to be used for the entire student body.”
Impressions Literary Magazine and The Highland Echo are both required to submit a budget packet, but their budget is already written into the SGA bylaws for automatic allocation.
“Funding for Impressions and The Echo is automatically allocated by the business office, meaning SGA has no control over their maximum funding amounts,” McKee said. “Personally, I believe these publications should be funded through a different channel, as they are academic courses rather than typical student organizations.”
In addition to being a student club and organization, Impressions Literary Magazine and The Highland Echo are both ENG 216, a one-credit-hour course required for writing communication majors.
The automatic allocation for these two clubs means that every year, The Highland Echo will automatically be eligible for at least 7% of the student activity fee, according to McKee, and Impressions is eligible for 2.75%.
“Each year, The Highland Echo and Impressions are guaranteed a percentage of the student activities fees regardless of enrollment,” SGA Faculty Advisor Doniqua Chen (‘15) said. “Out of 40 budget allocations for 2025-26, Highland Echo is ranked the 5th-largest, and Impressions is ranked the 6th-largest allocated budgets for registered student organizations.”
Impressions has long been trying to get its funding to match The Highland Echo’s, but they have had little success, according to Assistant Professor of Writing Communications and Impressions’ faculty advisor Di Bei.
According to Bei, in April 2025, Associate Professor of Writing Communications and the previous faculty advisor for Impressions, Christina Seymour, reached out to the then SGA Student Body President, Izzy Wright (‘25), and Little about permanently changing the amount Impressions is automatically allocated.
“It is a systemic equity problem between Impressions and The Highland Echo that I have witnessed for 10 years,” Seymour said in an email to Wright. “A newspaper can garner the respect of decision-makers, and in this role, I have felt the need to justify our needs as a literary magazine with administration and academic affairs, especially re-articulating the argument to new admin or SGA members each year,” Seymour said. “It becomes discouraging to re-do the process – this is a facet of inequity.”
While the budgets for these clubs differ, they have different publication expenses and uses of funds throughout the year.
“In a general sense, I do believe that the Highland Echo should have more of a budget, as they print eight times during an academic year compared to Impressions one,” McKee said. McKee added that the Highland Echo runs a website that requires maintenance.
“However, even with my belief that the Highland Echo should automatically have more funds, I do believe the difference is too large a margin and that Impressions should be allocated at least 5% [of the student activity fee],” he added.
Despite this call for change, SGA cannot currently change the budgetary bylaws.
“The SGA proposed a full change to our budgetary bylaws last semester, which included increased automatically allocated funds for Impressions. We were informed to delay that process, as there are certain channels we must go through before we can make changes to allocations,” McKee said. “As of this moment, I am unsure what those channels are or how the SGA can go forward with new budgetary bylaws. Whenever I ask about this, it seems as if many faculty and staff members at the college do not know the answer themselves, and the conversation just becomes delayed once again.”
Impressions expressed similar frustrations. “Honestly, we are starting to believe that we are getting bounced around so much on purpose because someone somewhere has decided we are not getting any more money, period, and nobody wants to be the one to tell us that,” Impressions Managing Editor Maryn Pope (‘26) said. “I don’t know that that’s true, but it’s how it feels.”
Although they have not been able to change the automatic allocation amount, for the past two years, SGA has passed bills to give Impressions additional funding, according to McKee.
“The SGA has been trying its best to come to a solution for Impressions, and we are just as frustrated that we have not been able to further support this process with the limited knowledge and power that we have.”