The actions taken by the Thelomathesian Society’s executive board over the first five weeks of the spring semester have been an egregious attack on the voices and interests of the student body. Thelmo, a student body that just two months ago boasted about their value of diversity of thought, has delegated most of its decision making to just six individuals who operate behind a closed door in an office with blinds blocking the public’s view. Unfortunately, this executive board has also shown bias towards what types of clubs and events get to present in a timely manner before the senate. So far, the group has predominantly allowed contingencies related to the current members of the executive board to be heard before the senate, which threatens the livelihoods of many clubs at St. Lawrence University, especially academically oriented clubs.  

The decision-makers in question consist of Dean Brooker ’25 (President), Dexter Seeley ’25 (Vice President of Senate Affairs), Nina Spinney ’25 (Secretary), Kimberly Bravo ’25 (Vice President of University Relations), Marteas Johnson ’23 (Treasurer), and Aaron Levy ’23 (Student Delegate to the Board of Trustees). Brooker is the leader of the group, which makes him the student on campus with the most direct access to administrative resources and information. He has made it his prerogative to maintain his access to needed funding and information while starving common students of the same.  

This past fall, the company that The Hill News (THN) printed with had to shut down one of its branches due to rising costs post-COVID, forcing us to change the style of our paper to one of lesser quality (as you may remember from the drastic change in the appearance of THN halfway through the semester). They also significantly increased the price of printing. This spring, The Hill switched to a different company that prints higher quality paper for the same price that the old company had tried to charge. Unfortunately, this unforeseen circumstance forced THN to go over the allocated printing budget. The only option was to apply for a contingency request from Thelmo, which was done in January. The contingency request was outright denied almost immediately, which led to a meeting between the two groups on Feb. 3. Brooker and Seeley asserted that the contingency request was denied so that ideas of more digital means of publication could be discussed. After countless verbal attacks from the Thelmo e-board, it was agreed upon that THN would be allowed to present the contingency (which President Brooker later claimed never happened) to the Thelmo senate. The date was set in stone: Feb. 22.  

However, Thelmo abruptly decided to serve their own interests, pushing back the appearance less than 24 hours before the meeting. The meeting instead featured contingency requests from St. Lawrence University’s Model United Nations club and The Men’s and Women’s Squash teams. Both of those groups are heavily associated with Brooker, with him being the Vice President of Model UN and a member of the Men’s Squash team. The groups appeared to receive preferential treatment, likely due to their ties with Brooker, who plays a major role in setting the Thelmo meeting agenda. Both contingencies passed unanimously. However, most of the funding was delegated to the Men’s team, which is a problem in and of itself.  

Many members of Thelmo have voiced their displeasure with the e-board. An anonymous sophomore senator voiced their concerns with the apparent bias regarding who gets to present in front of the Senate: “We were all pretty suspicious that three out of the five organizations presenting were sports-related, especially when the president is a member of the team that presented first.” The anonymous senator also displayed a lack of confidence in the organization’s ability to sustain this flawed, unjust method of operating, asserting that, “[they] give [Thelmo] until March when it implodes on itself. It’s becoming a checkbook for the athletic department.” 

The issue regarding Thelmo’s tendency to cater to the needs of athletically oriented groups was previously outlined in a Feb. 23 opinion editorial titled “What’s Up with Thelmo This Term?” by Thelmo senator Poppy Hanson ’25. Hanson proclaims that she has “seen how the E-Board appears to prioritize certain clubs and events over others, regardless of their actual importance to students,” and later she gets even more specific, adding that, “other senators and I believe that the e-Board currently maintains a bias towards funding athletic organizations over other campus groups.” As previously mentioned, Brooker is a member of the squash team. However, two additional members of the executive board are also part of athletics teams—Levy as a fellow squasher, and Seeley as a member of the football team. Much like the week of Feb. 22, which saw the squash contingency, Hanson cites that the Feb. 15 meeting predominantly featured athletics groups, in which one could assume that three athletes would hold positive bias. On top of that, she mentions that the squash team was not held to the same stringent standards that the other groups presenting were, citing the situation as ironic considering that both Brooker and Levy are on that team. Whereas the Squash team was able to immediately present to the senate, other groups need to explicitly provide explanations for how they have attempted to garner outside funding and must argue their worth to the campus community – such as The Hill News needing to conduct a survey to prove that the physical paper is valued by students, faculty, and staff. 

The Hill News is not against the idea of organizations needing to try to find funding from other sources before asking for a contingency. The university is obviously in a post-COVID state, in which there is not as much money to go around as there once was. However, the problem is the inequality in how these standards are being enforced. The Thelmo e-board chooses to apply these strict standards to some groups, while utilizing their executive power and the lack of checks and balances in the inherent structure of Thelmo in order to ensure funding and privilege for the groups that they favor.  

Pro-athletics bias is not the only concern that has garnered attention from students. An anonymous sophomore member of Model UN commented on this problem from a different side, recognizing the bias favorability towards their own club. The member stated, “President Brooker has abused his office in order to obtain funds for our club, the model UN—a club where he serves as our Vice President.” Appearing frustrated that a leader of their club is abusing their power, he adds, “Thus I reason that the President [Brooker] has reduced Student Government into a spoils system, where those in power funnel money into their own self interests.”  

Of course, politicians abusing their political power is not breaking news. People who hold such power almost always take advantage. The real concern is for the countless SLU organizations and students that aren’t directly associated with members of the e-board. As of late, these students and groups have been direly overlooked and neglected by Thelmo.   

One individual who feels that her organization’s needs have been ignored is Alexandra Hill ’23. Hill is the president of the Irving Bachelor Society (IBS), which is SLU’s English honors society that puts on English-related events and service projects every semester. Earlier this semester, IBS applied for $900 to attend an academic conference in Colorado, which would benefit all SLU students by strengthening our connection to the international honor society, Sigma Tau Delta. However, according to Hill, she was immediately denied by the Thelmo exec board without the chance to even present her case to the Senate.  

The e-board attempted to justify their actions, responding by saying “Thelmo is unable to help individuals with personal academic goals or studies and as such cannot fund your trip to further your own academic achievements.” Firstly, nowhere in the Thelmo constitution does it say that academic endeavors cannot be supported. It does say that Thelmo has a responsibility to provide funding to opportunities that better the opportunities for the campus as a whole—which the English Convention would accomplish by establishing a connection with this international resource for SLU’s Irving Bachelor Society, giving SLU students the opportunity to apply for scholarships and providing future SLU students with the knowledge that presenting at these conventions is attainable. 

Just last semester, the Thelmo senate agreed to send two students representing the Arabic department to a language conference, which is no different than the current situation Hill finds the IBS in. It’s also fairly ironic that Model UN was approved for funding, considering the same argument could be applied to their request.  

IBS was eventually able to get some Thelmo funding, which indicates that the e-board wasn’t basing their rejection on any real rule to begin with. Additionally, the group was only granted a third of her original request, leaving Hill to pay for the rest of expenses out of her own pocket. Hill said, “I just find it unfair what Thelmo does and does not decide to approve – and even more so what the executive board decides can even be discussed before the governing body.”  

This points towards clear frustration with the lack of transparency. Members of Thelmo also echo Hill’s sentiment. An anonymous junior senator said that “the e-board used to be the people who would fight everything, but now they are required to keep their mouths shut during senate meetings. So now, they stop it behind the scenes before it can get to the senate.” Decisions have been left out of the public view in an attempt to exercise power, which has destroyed any transparency that the organization had left. 

Another group that has had funding cut, the Outing Club [OC], has made their opinion of Thelmo public knowledge. The OC applied for a contingency to host Titus and was denied an opportunity to speak before the senate, just like the IBS and THN. In response to the denial of funding for Titus, myriad posters condemning the actions of the e-board have been anonymously posted all over campus. The posters read “The Thelmo executive board denied Titus, despite having over $85,000 of student funds.” The poster defends Titus by calling out the e-board, emphasizing that students can’t “let this happen again. Don’t let another beloved SLU tradition die at the hands of incompetent, self-righteous, disconnected students who want to play pretend government and power trip instead of doing their only role – [funding] student events and clubs.” Students have expressed their belief that the decisions by Thelmo are a threat to not only student organizations but to SLU tradition.  

The Underground is another student organization that has felt the effects of thinning funding for academic clubs. The Underground is SLU’s very own undergraduate research journal, which is an amazing opportunity for students to have work published, much like other student publications, like The Laurentien Magazine and The Hill News (both of which are also facing budget cuts). Toky Rakotoarisoa ’23 is the editor-in-chief of the journal, and she takes pride in the opportunity it allows while fearing how the declining budget negatively affects the journal. 

“The Underground has been a unique opportunity for students to share their academic or artistic work with the rest of the community for over ten years,” Rakotoarisoa said. “There are many ways in which The Underground has been affected by budget cuts. Not only are we only able to print very few copies every semester, but we also have to compromise on the quality of the prints. Our small budget also affects the number of research papers we can afford to print, no matter how many submissions we receive.”  

These cuts aren’t a result of students not being interested. Rakotoarisoa proudly added that this year the journal received the highest ever number of submissions. Even with that good news, the dialogue unfortunately turns towards the struggles of funding once again. Rakotoarisoa concludes, “As the current editor-in-chief, I can say that The Underground is currently struggling to find enough funding just to cover printing costs, which is extremely limiting when we have been working hard to improve the quality of our work, and we are also not able to reward our members for their hard work. Unfortunately, everything requires funding.” While The Underground isn’t being cut out completely, the threat of further budget cuts diminishes its ability to fully operate to the best of its ability. To create a publication, you need to reward those who do the hard work as well as be able to afford the cost of printing. At the end of the day, cuts make both of those harder.  

Thelmo’s e-board is clearly displaying a bias towards organizations that they have personal interests in. Unfortunately, this bias isn’t just unfair in the moral right; it’s also having a devastating effect on many student groups that have academic orientations. Their outright denial of multiple contingencies is a display of how close-minded this e-board is, and this is the exact opposite of what SLU needs. Athletics may be important to SLU, but the e-board needs to realize that there are about 1,560 students who aren’t involved in athletics that are suffering from their biased decisions. St. Lawrence is a university, not an athletics club, and it surely isn’t Brooker’s personal sandbox. To Mr. Brooker and the e-board, you do not represent the students’ views, they do. Most students feel like they have no representation of where they think funds should go. Students need to start holding this e-board accountable because right now their decision-making is threatening everyone’s St. Lawrence experience. Speak up while you can SLU. The future these individuals are painting isn’t a pretty one.