"People would just write checks and assume we have the money to cover them," he said.

Only with last semester's treasurer, Brian R. Blais '97, did the council make a concerted effort to determine its balance on a regular basis, Smith said.

According to Blais, when he took over as treasurer, the records of the council's finances--a pile of receipts and bank statements--were handed to him in an empty Corona beer box.

"To be frank, it was a mess," Blais said. "We were bouncing checks all the time first semester last year, and nobody ever balanced the checkbook."

A major accounting problem which led to the unexpected lack of funds was the Finance Committee's previous methods of dealing with grant money.

Student groups often do not immediately claim the grants the Finance Committee allocates them, leaving the committee with a significant surplus of funds.

Since student groups have several more months to pick up their money, much of that money will eventually go to the student groups to which it was allocated.

In the past, however, all of this money was rolled over into the council's general committee fund for use by the Campus Life and Student Affairs committees the following semester, Blais said.

In essence, the council traditionally "ignored" whatever grants it still had to give out, Smith said. The cumulative result over the course of several years is part of the unexpected shortage of funds this year.

Rather than being short of money, last year's council members thought the budget would be in excess of previous years this fall due to the rollover from grants they thought had been accumulating for some time.

More problems occurred with the council's finances due to spending on this fall's Gala Ball.

Thinking its finances were much more sound than they actually were, the council allocated $15,000 to the Campus Life Committee last spring to help pay for the Gala Ball, Smith said.

Not all of that money was spent during the spring semester, however. The money that committee did not spend was spent by the council for other projects or rolled over for this year's council.

The net result was that this year's council had to provide about $12,000 to cover ball expenses that members thought had already been paid for the last spring, Smith explained.

In effect, instead of having a large rollover for its committee fund, the council found itself saddled with debt this year.