
For the last four years, the newly minted captain of the Stony Brook hockey team has cherished the opportunity to step onto the ice and travel all over the East Coast with his teammates, proudly representing the Seawolves. Club ice hockey has allowed defenseman Andrew Mancini to continue playing the game he loves while working toward a degree and career in business. However, 56 years of history and tradition for one of Stony Brook’s oldest clubs is now in grave danger.
“We’re looking at maybe three or four years before we fold at the rate things are going right now,” Mancini said in an interview with The Statesman. “Once this isn’t a club anymore, it’s going to stir a big pot.”
In 2021, the hockey team and several other club sports teams had their worlds turned upside down. After years of receiving adequate funding, Stony Brook’s Undergraduate Student Government (USG) introduced a bylaw that capped each club’s budget at $40,000.
The budget cuts quietly took place on a Zoom call at 8:37 p.m. on Dec. 2, 2021 — on the eve of final exams — with none of the affected clubs present. USG neglected to include the topic on its agenda prior to the meeting as well.
When deciding to cap the budget, former USG President Manjot Singh and the rest of USG’s Senators sought to foster equity amongst all clubs, as disclosed in the meeting minutes from Dec. 2. With members of sports clubs being either recruited or making the team via tryouts, USG aimed to provide footing for open-membership organizations that a larger proportion of the student body could enjoy. Despite the bylaw, sports clubs still take up 35.9% of USG’s club funds.
“We are not trying to target any specific club,” Singh said during the meeting on Dec. 2, 2021. “But we have to understand that USG cannot fund everyone. We will encourage those clubs to look for ways to fundraise and fill that gap that we cannot fund.”
However, in reality, the bylaw has not accomplished its goal. Instead, the rigid cap has left the hockey team and other sports clubs unable to obtain the necessary funding, while organizations that have no use for an increased budget receive them every year regardless.
Over the past three years, 83.4% of clubs that failed to use all of their line budget secured increases. Contrarily, organizations that use 100% of their allocated money are ineligible to receive a boost if they are at the $40,000 threshold. Aside from the bowling team — which used 100% of its line budget last year but saw a decrease in 2024-25 — the hockey team is the only other club to use all of its allocated funds without seeing an increase the next year due to the cap.
Singh also stated that the athletic fee built into Stony Brook’s tuition would help the hockey team. However, that strictly goes to the University’s NCAA Division I programs and athletic facilities on campus.
After the clubs most affected by the cap raised this issue with Devin Lobosco — last year’s USG President — he amended the rule slightly, mandating clubs to spend at least 80% of their budget in order to receive an increase the following year.
Nevertheless, this modification has forced the hockey team to watch 69 out of 138 returning clubs (50%) leave as much as 20% of their budget on the table and still receive increases for the current academic year. Most notably, Club ID 33 3000 spent 44.78% of its budget last year but received a 10.92% increase in 2024-25.
Though $40,000 may seem like a sizable amount, the hockey team holds a disadvantage that makes that number debilitating: there is no ice rink on campus, meaning it has to rent ice time at The Rinx in Hauppauge, N.Y. Aside from hotel and bus costs to play out of town, ice time alone adds up to approximately $70,000 per season for the hockey team, and that number rises each year. Overall, the team spends around $225,000 each season.
“With inflation, that 40 grand really isn’t 40 grand anymore,” head coach Chris Garofalo — who has been with the program since joining as a player in 1992 — said. “It’s not valued as much. They’re cutting us indirectly every year.”
Prior to the budget cap’s implementation in the 2022-23 academic year, the ice hockey club received $114,975 in funds in 2021-22. The last time it was allocated as little as $40,000 was nearly 20 years ago. In the three years since the cap has taken effect, the team has had to heavily rely on fundraising, donations and player contributions to stay afloat after the 65.2% decrease, but the sustainability of that method represents a question mark.
“Singh took our legs out from under us,” Garofalo said. “The problem with fundraising is that it isn’t a guarantee. Our players are contributing over $2,100 each and have to pay for most of their own equipment. There’s only so much we can ask them to contribute and fundraising is a total crapshoot.”
Current USG President Nistha Boghra is in favor of gradually raising the 80% rule now that USG has an improved voucher-processing system. In fact, the percentage was recently increased to 85%, which will take effect in the fall. Though she voted for the cap when she was a USG Senator in 2021, Boghra has also suggested raising Stony Brook’s cap to $70,000 to accommodate the hockey team’s off-campus facility fee and expressed regret over capping clubs without consulting with them first.
“In the moment, we didn’t want to leave clubs six fewer weeks to prepare for the change,” Boghra said. “It felt a bit rushed and the next day, I wish we had notified the clubs before voting. We’ve gotten a number of complaints.”
As a recent club founder, Boghra’s experience on both sides of the aisle has made her more receptive to change.
“I wish we could have found a better solution than $40,000 flat,” Boghra said. “There are a lot of times that I’ve been frustrated with the way we handle things. My club travels to competitions and I absolutely understand the feeling of potentially falling apart.”
However, Mancini and Garofalo’s attempts to get that point across to USG’s Senators have fallen on deaf ears. After scheduling 33 regular season games for the 2022-23 season — its first year with the cap — the hockey team has cut down to 29 and 30 over the last two seasons, respectively. Moreover, the team is currently practicing just three hours per week. To further limit the financial burden, the Seawolves start training camp late and stop practicing once the season is over. USG’s Senators suggested that the club cut back even further and become “less competitive.”
Unlike most club teams, Stony Brook’s ice hockey team is well known throughout the country. The squad has won a conference-record nine Eastern States Collegiate Hockey League championships. Additionally, it has appeared in the American Collegiate Hockey Association’s Men’s Division I National Championship Tournament 21 times and was the runner-up for the title during the 2014-15 season. The program also attracts a number of out-of-state players, who pay increased tuition, as well as fans to its games despite being located nearly 20 minutes away from Stony Brook’s main campus.
“We’re giving [Stony Brook] national recognition,” Mancini said. “A lot of guys come here and they know who we are. Now, [USG]’s going against their own mission statement. What’s the point of Stony Brook being ‘Far Beyond’ when you’re going to tell me straight to my face that we should lower our standards? You’re contradicting everything you’re supposed to be about.”
Regarding USG’s usage of the leftover money, it recycles it. Rather than disbursing the surplus to the clubs that need it, the sum is constantly returned to the clubs that left it unused during the previous school year, creating a continuous loop of excess cash. Excluding grants for clubs that went over their allocated line budget, roughly $171,000 was left unspent last year.
“There’s no guarantee of how much rollover money we will have and how [clubs] will be funded with that money,” Singh said on Dec. 2, 2021. “And if we give some clubs rollover money but not all, then that will create problems on why we funded certain clubs over others.”
Along with the ice hockey team, cheerleading, the dance team, sailing, roller hockey, the ballroom dance team, ultimate frisbee, alternative spring break outreach and crew at Stony Brook all requested over $40,000. According to the Corq app, which shares events that organizations on campus are holding while tracking membership totals, USG’s failure to meet their budgetary needs has left 742 students negatively impacted.
Due to their struggles to get through to USG’s Senators, Mancini and the hockey team has filed an appeal to the government’s judicial branch — which returned last year under Lobosco’s watch — with hopes of getting the bylaw repealed or amended. Nonetheless, there is a major conflict of interest present. Chief Justice David Safo served as a Senator last year and upheld the bylaw while working alongside the people who originally ratified it, essentially nullifying the branch’s purpose of checking the executive and legislative branches. The judicial branch did not find the bylaw to be unconstitutional.
Additionally, USG members receive $16 an hour to meet New York’s minimum wage, which is a change from their previous stipend pay. Since the 2019-2020 school year, student payroll has climbed all the way up from $200,000 to $365,000. Last year, student payroll went nearly 125% over its allocated funds.
Despite the payroll budget having increased with minimum wage, the maximum budget cap for clubs has remained stagnant without adjusting for inflation. With minimum wage set to rise again next semester, payroll is set for another increase while the cap lays dormant.
Even with Stony Brook’s student activity fee climbing from $99.50 to $106.50 per semester last spring, distributing funds has remained difficult for USG. Along with an influx of new clubs creating a tighter budget and SUNY combating USG’s lobbying efforts to raise the student activity fee’s $250-per-academic-year limit, Boghra acknowledged that the pay change has made budgeting a greater challenge.
“Being paid hourly is equitable by labor laws, but I much preferred the stipend model,” Boghra said. “It was a lot easier in terms of me and the body budgeting and planning for student-hour work.”
Thoroughly, the ideal solution for the hockey team would be to simply go back to the way things were before the bylaw was created in 2021. A combination of spending trends and budget hearings would determine line budgets.
However, the hockey team is flexible, as it also proposed an option that would keep the cap in place but make it less rigid, mirroring one of Boghra’s ideas. Rather than leaving $171,000 unspent, clubs who need the money can potentially apply for the excess amount in this possible solution. Along with that, clubs that cannot function without paying a facility cost could be distributed additional grants and funding as necessary.
“Amend the $40,000 cap and allow an exception, without any predetermined limit, for those clubs that have justified expenses that exceed the cap,” Garofalo said. “Clubs that do not have free, on-campus facilities at their disposal can leverage an exception process to request for additional funding to pay for facilities required for the club to function.”
A bill was introduced to the Senate that would have created an exception clause with a softer cap. It narrowly failed ratification.
The model aligns with USG’s original vision as well. After a pair of Senators raised concerns about abruptly capping the budget, Singh explained that clubs in need of additional funding could apply for grants. However, the hockey team’s requests have been denied.
“[USG] keeps pointing to our fundraising account to tell us why we can’t get grants,” Mancini said. “Just like SUNY requires USG to keep rollover money in case of emergency, we need to do the same and they can’t seem to grasp that. Fundraising’s unpredictable. We can’t use all of that money in one year. We have to make it last for the next few years to ensure we stay afloat.”
For now, as the club ice hockey team awaits any potential changes to USG’s financial bylaws, it will try to make do with what it has.
“I understand that we’re a minority,” Garofalo said. “I understand that 98% of the clubs don’t have a need for what we do. But we’re stuck in the middle here and dying because of it. [USG] has created inequity for us.”