Yearbook puts out a beautiful new volume for students each school year.  Our musicals bring in hundreds of people.  Our newspaper is nationally ranked by several organizations.  Besides being exceptional at what they do, what do these extracurricular activities all have in common?  Every penny that they earn over their budget is taken from them and given back to the school at the end of each year.

It should be great if yearbook sells enough senior pages that they exceed their budget.  Maybe they could save up for a new piece of equipment that they need in order to continue doing a good job.  However, that won’t happen.  If they exceed their budget, they have to give the excess to the school, which will be redistributed throughout the school the next year.

This system hurts groups that have to raise part of their budgets, as opposed being given a budget entirely from the school.  The yearbook, the newspaper, and the theater department are a few examples of groups that have to raise their own money.

According to the administration, all money that these extracurricular activities make over budget is put back into the general fund which gives money to other clubs that don’t have to raise money.

The plays pay for themselves with the major cash they bring in.  One sold out show, with about 600 seats at about $15.00 per ticket, makes $9,000 dollars for the school.  Every show isn’t sold out but the eight performances make tens of thousands of dollars.

Students and teachers work tirelessly for weeks to put on the shows and sell tickets, but every dollar over their budget goes straight back to the school.  Ask someone who’s been at rehearsal for five hours every day for the past two weeks if they want their ticket money to go to Speech and Debate’s transportation, and his or her answer is going to be “no.”

Working on The Patriot, each student on The Patriot is required to ask local companies for advertisements to earn money to keep our budget.  There is no reason to keep building relationships between JC and the community after we’ve reached our quota, because we won’t keep the money.

There is no reason for the hard-earned money of one club to go to another that gets money entirely from the school. There’s nothing wrong with clubs that only get money from the school, but it’s unfair when other clubs supply it.

Instead of taking money from clubs that earn it, the extra money not used should roll over into the next year.  The hours of blood, sweat, and tears put into getting that money makes it excruciating to see it slip through our fingers.

Martha Schick is the Multimedia Chief for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com