Lost in the bigger news of Wednesday’s Students’ Association meeting was the fact that the Appropriations Committee and Congress worked together to neither waste nor hoard the students’ money.

The balance between a generally free-spending Congress and a generally frugal executive treasurer appears to have been reached after that treasurer, Jonathan Wilkerson, announced that less than $500 remained in the Student Request Fund.

This means Congress and Appropriations combined to spend student funds on a number of groups, granting every single request they thought valid.

Because of the wise spending habits produced this semester, a larger number of groups received money. Not one group was left out because of a money shortage.

Of course this required both sides to spend less on most groups than those groups would have liked. But that’s OK because the more groups that receive student money, the more students who receive a payoff on their student fee.

This is the result of an unpopular practice called “nickel and diming” by its critics. But frugality is far more than nickel and diming. It’s being smart with money for which you’re responsible.

Had Congress and the Appropriations Committee not “nickel and dimed” the big multicultural groups, then honors groups and other smaller student organizations wouldn’t have had the opportunity to request funds at all.

No one wants a repeat of last semester’s request fund debacle. It was embarrassing when inordinately large amounts of money went to a select few, and the junior class officers had to bail out the fund just to give a couple hundred dollars to two student groups.

This semester’s wise spending was certainly a welcome sight, and the Optimist applauds both Wilkerson’s committee and Congress for being good stewards of the money with which they were entrusted.