The College's newly announced budget-reconciliation plan will cut jobs, dining services and offered courses, but the upcoming Winter Carnival's predetermined funds will not be affected, according to assistant director of the Collis Center and Student Activities Brian Dye.
"So far, it's going to be the same Winter Carnival as we've always had," Dye said.
The total cost of Winter Carnival is approximately $12,000, which does not come from the College's general budget but the Student Activities fee that undergraduates pay each term, according to Dye. The Programming Board, which receives a portion of that revenue, includes funding for Winter Carnival in its budget proposal. The Undergraduate Finance Committee approved Programming Board's budget last spring.
"The funding that we're operating with is what we've already received in the past," Dye said.
Winter Carnival has not come up specifically in conversations about budget cuts at the College, according to Dye.
"We have a lot of set costs," he said. "We already try to operate as efficiently as possible."
Dye said these expenses include posters and emergency personnel, which are unlikely to change. When selecting vendors, he added, the College chooses the most inexpensive options.
The Winter Carnival weekend may prove to be a brief economic boon for local businesses, however, as alumni and visitors flood the town.
"Whenever there's a Dartmouth event we get some kind of a boost," Thomas Guerra, owner of the Dirt Cowboy Cafe, said. He estimated a sales increase of approximately 10 percent over the Carnival weekend.
"It definitely helps the local economy," Guerra said.
The Dartmouth Co-op generally experiences a similar jump in sales as alumni and families stock up on Dartmouth gear and Winter Carnival posters, according to store manager Paul Bouchard.
As budget cuts are implemented, the possibility of a more thinly spread Student Activities fee remains. If the fee is seen as a funding alternative for other events and activities, Winter Carnival may feel effects in the future, Dye said,
"[The UFC] may or may not allocate the same amount for next year," Dye said. "What the next one looks like, who knows?"
Students across campus recognized Winter Carnival as an important event in a Student Assembly budget survey.
College traditions were consistently rated very highly in the overall results of the survey. Traditions are "extremely important and fundamental to students' experiences," according to the summary of the results.
Some demographics, however, were more likely to question the weekend's importance.
"I didn't put [Winter Carnival] as high considering the economic situation," Amaury Boscio '09 said, when asked what he took into account while filling out Student Assembly's January survey.
Boscio nonetheless said traditions such as Winter Carnival are "a big part of the Dartmouth experience here."
There was also a discrepancy between how high Native American and international students rated traditions compared to the rest of the community. On average, those students ranked traditions as less important than Dartmouth Dining Services and Career Services, according to the survey. In contrast, other demographics ranked traditions as more important to their Dartmouth experience than day-to-day College operations.
Still, many students feel that the Carnival's influence transcends other quantifiable measurement.
"It's not like a concrete thing that you can attach a number to," Yoko Matsumoto '09 said.
