The Carleton Student Association (CSA) Senate — Carleton’s student government — approved a 6.21% increase in the Student Activity Fee for the 2025-2026 school year in a Jan. 20 meeting. This increase brings the fee for next year to $462, $35 higher than this year’s fee of $435.

Every student on campus pays the Student Activity Fee, which the CSA uses to fund student organizations and activities for the academic year. Carleton considers the CSA fee a part of the college’s cost of attendance. According to the CSA website, the activity fee (along with vending machine revenue) is the source of all of CSA’s funding. This funding is allocated in multiple ways, including the CSA Budget Committee’s spring allocations for student organizations’ yearly budgets, special allocations for student organizations’ events not planned for in spring allocations and smaller line items such as a Senator Access Fund and Treasurer’s Discretionary Fund. 

While every student is required to pay the Student Activity Fee, students with enough need-based financial aid who have accepted their full financial aid package can request a fee waiver to offset the cost through the Student Activity Fee Financial Support Fund. 

According to Senior Associate Dean and Director of Student Financial Aid Danielle Hayden, this fee waiver previously only covered part of the activity fee for every student, but for the 2024-2025 school year, the Financial Aid office chose to cover the entire fee for fewer students who qualified with the highest level of need. Hayden explained that some students who may have previously qualified for a smaller portion of the aid did not receive it this year.

“In the past, funding a portion of the CSA fee allowed us to provide funding for more students while still staying within the total budget,” Hayden said. “Based on the applications and budget this year, we switched the priority. We increased the amount that we covered per student by providing aid for the full CSA fee. This shift allowed us to provide more support to individual students with the most financial need, but there were fewer recipients of the funding.”

In terms of the upcoming 2025-2026 school year, Hayden said they cannot be certain whether the financial aid will continue to be allocated the same way. 

“I think this will be an ongoing conversation with CSA to determine the priorities for the funding moving forward,” she said. “Is it more important to fund a higher number of students [with] less money, or is it more important to fund [fewer] students with more money?”

56% of Carleton students receive financial aid and Carleton categorizes 8.7% of students as having “family incomes that would make the student Pell Eligible” or having a family income level around $40,000 – $45,000 per year. It is unclear what level of financial aid students need to be on to receive assistance with the Student Activity Fee.

The Student Activity Fee has continually increased in the past five years. The fee for the 2021-2022 school year was $375. Increases have varied annually, but this year has had the largest increase since 2021, when laundry machines that previously contributed revenue to the budget were made free (the fee increased by 15.32%).

CSA Treasurer Jamie Klein ’25 originally proposed slightly lower increases to the activity fee, but Klein explained that the Budget Committee felt a larger increase this year would help the fee return to a baseline yearly increase of around 4%. One primary reason for the larger increase was combating the projected deficit of the yearly budget. 

“For multiple years, the yearly budget has been approved with a projected deficit.” Klein said. “We knew this deficit would come out of our surplus money, which is why we were able to approve it.” This mismatch between spending and revenue, however, was determined to be unsustainable, causing Klein to support the larger fee increase.

The second primary reason Klein cited for the increase was to ensure that as many student organizations and events could receive their full funding without spending into a deficit.

“Even though we projected a $20k deficit in our budget for this fiscal year, we still had to make very difficult cuts during last spring allocations,” Klein said. “We had over a million dollars in requests and ended up allocating $812k to these organizations and offices. This meant that some requests which fit into our guidelines were cut for overall budget cuts.” 

Klein said they hope that with the increased fee, this problem can be prevented in future years, and organizations can receive the funding they need.

“Both Budget Committee and Senate had thorough discussions around the reasons, and there are definitely pros and cons to increasing the activity fee by a higher percent,” Klein said. “While I will not be involved in spring allocations this year, I hope that the slight bump to the budget will help the committee to balance their fiscal responsibilities with the requests of the students we serve.”

Hayden explained that adjusting financial aid for the increasing CSA fee is a regular process: “since the CSA fee is part of the comprehensive fee, the financial aid budget accounts for the annual increases when we submit our request for funding each year.”

Though many are happy with the move, others remain skeptical. One anonymous student told the Carletonian that CSA should practice more fiscal responsibility. “I get why they’re raising the rate,” the student said. “But I think that’s a sign that we should reduce the amount that they’re spending on rather than increase what they charge us.” 

Still, Klein said they find the Student Activity Fee to be a great opportunity for students’ money to be managed by other students and to go towards events benefiting students. They explained that having the activity fee separate from the college’s budget gives more power to the students.

 “I believe the fundamental purpose is to help students create spaces that matter to them: to build community, to share their interests, to experience new things, or maybe just to have fun events to go to with friends,” they said.