By: Olivia Sherman, News Writer
Editor’s Note: This article was updated on September 8, 2023, to note that the black wellness retreat was not cancelled.
At the Simon Fraser Student Society (SFSS) meeting on June 21, the SFU Students of Caribbean and African Ancestry (SOCA) presented an amended proposal for their wellness retreat. This event was aimed at healing the physical, mental, and emotional health of Black students. While the original proposal from May 24 requested $10,000 of funding from SFSS, the June 21 proposal halved this initial request to $5,000. This new request was almost unanimously rejected by SFSS.
The Peak sat down with SOCA president, Lauretta Umukoro, to discuss the significance of what the retreat represented, and the events leading up to the funding rejection.
“The idea behind it was to create an experience for Black students that had not been done before,” Umukoro explained. “I wanted to create a space where they could sort of get away” from the hecticness of school.
At the May 24 SFSS meeting, SOCA representatives, Yaye Seydi Balde and Amina Hassan, presented an outline for the required costs. This included the expenses for the 28 confirmed attendees, who would not pay for the trip. The estimated total for the roundtrip bus to Chilliwack, the cost of food, and facilitators was $9,304.12. Hassan said the initial request of $10,000 was a loose estimate of the necessary funding, and there was no expectation of using it all. The representatives also stated that, prior to the presentation, they had not applied for grants to aid in the cost. Councillors expressed this was the general procedure when requesting funding.
Many SFSS councillors voiced concerns with their budget. Vice president of equity and sustainability, Priyanka Kaur Dhesa, noted that SOCA had already received $5,000 from the BIPOC committee, and questioned whether SOCA was requesting an additional $5,000, or a total of $15,000 for the retreat. SOCA representatives confirmed the $5,000 was received and was used for a down payment for the campsite. The representative then said SOCA was requesting a total of $15,000 for the four-day retreat.
“The $5,000 was used towards the down payment of the property which was non-refundable, which meant in order for all that money not to go to waste, the retreat had to happen,” Umukoro later clarified. “SOCA was fully committed to having the retreat with or without the support of the SFSS because of the excitement and engagement we had gotten from our membership.”
SOCA pulled funds from other sources, including their CORE account within the SFSS, their trust account, the Black Student Support Levy, and the external SOCA bank account. SOCA was able to fund the trip without support from the SFSS.
Vice president of university and academic affairs, Thomas Leuth, said the requested amount was “concerning” considering SOCA already receives $100,000 from the SFSS annually. However, SOCA’s budget from the SFSS is only $65,000. Umukoro said she is unsure where the other monetary figure came from, but states the miscommunication was “due to lack of information.” The debate was later tabled until June 21.
Leading up to the June 21 meeting, Umukoro said SOCA was referred to apply for grant funding in order to raise money for the wellness retreat. Through exact budgeting and applying for grants, SOCA went back to SFSS with the new budget of $5,875. However, despite cutting their budget in half, SOCA’s request was denied. “You ended up in Council, and the fact is you are here, and therefore, this grant directly concerns SFSS, directly concerns the money that comes from students’ pockets,” said SFSS president Liam Feng.
“I’m going to make this clear, on the record. I do not support this, and here’s my justification as to why,” Feng stated, citing the original budget from May 24 and its drastic change on June 21. “This is an indication that the cost breakdown was not going to be accurate [ . . . ] they overestimated by two-fold. I want to make this clear, though, that if we had agreed to this grant before, in the first Council meeting, we would have given a whopping 10k [ . . . ] which is humongous. And these kinds of things have consequences that are not small.”
Umukoro said the staff from SFSS who were tasked with helping SOCA reallocate funds and request grants had stated SOCA would be guaranteed the grants. In the June 21 meeting, president Liam Feng reiterated that “going through the proper grant process does not guarantee that the grant will go through.” Of this rejection, Umukoro felt SOCA was led astray, saying it wasn’t fair to make SOCA “go through a grant process, knowing fully well you are not going to approve the funding in the first place.
“So you had made us do extra work from the work we’re already doing in regards to the retreat, and only for you to say you don’t think the event is needed [ . . . ] And also they didn’t see that it was going to cater to a lot of students and it was accessible to a lot of students.”
Umukoro said she aims to plan out an exact budget for similar retreats or events in the future, including “reaching out to external organizations to come on board and sponsor and maybe also provide funding.”
She also said SOCA will continue to “create a safe space for [their] community members and allies to come together [ . . . ] through various events and workshops such as the Black Healing Space, Community events and collaboration within and outside SFU.”
However, she is less optimistic about reaching out to SFSS for aid again. “As for going back to the SFSS to actual funding: I don’t know. I can’t speak to that as of now, just because of the level of harm that was caused through the whole process of asking for grants, and just how excruciating the process is.”
Umukoro said that while the next steps for SOCA are uncertain, she is hopeful: “I feel like we started something that is really going to stand the test of time, especially with the Black community.”
