Article by 2026 BRA President Euan Maclean
This August, Burgmann Residents’ Association (BRA) made the decision with the support of the student body to donate $80,000 out of BRA’s reserve funds to the college. These funds have supported the purchase of a 12-seater college bus (Burg Bus or Bee-Bee for short [or long?]), the upgrade of the Common Room to better facilitate events through a lighting and sound system, and a donation of $10,000 to the college’s Endowment Fund.
The last of these items, a $10,000 donation to the newly established and professionally managed endowment fund, was a decision that came out of a simple premise: this isn’t our money to spend, it was the BRA fees paid by residents during the COVID years who didn’t get the many BRA event offerings that make the Burgmann experience so great. The family weekends, the dinners, the nav nights, the drunk debating, the art shows, the burg ball, the simple things that have built college into a place we’ve all come to love.
The Endowment Fund
The Burgmann College Endowment Fund came out of a push from students for the college to think more bigly of itself. Burg has historically been stuck in a perpetual cycle of thinking of itself as the down-to-earth college, incapable and unwilling to become a big college with pretentious dinners and academic robes. That means that fees stay cheap, with the idea that the college stays accessible. What it also means is that the college often fails to fully realise what a great product it is, stuck with tall poppy syndrome.
My ten cents in combatting that tall poppy syndrome is this: Burgmann is unlike any college in the country. We have students that sit on the Board, we have one of the most powerful student associations out of any of the country’s (universities and colleges), and we have a college that is truly reflective of what its students want. “Burgmann was co-design before it became trendy, and will (I hope) always be a student community build for students, not an apartment building.”
Building a Sustainable Future
Our goal as a student body sitting on Council and Board has been to make Burgmann as accessible as possible, without compromising the financial integrity of the college. The college, to be candid, faces many challenges. Financially, COVID wiped out our operating reserves. If another pandemic was to hit tomorrow, Burgmann College would be in dire straits. But how do you balance accessibility with existence?
To keep those fees affordable and the experience accessible for lower income students, the college needs to rely more on the successes of its alumni, parents and community. As the college turns 55, the pipes are (literally!) wearing thin and our overall infrastructure is starting to date. The tardis (which I love) is beginning to show its age. That means we need to start thinking about turning a college that has been thought of as ‘new’ for 55 years, into one that is established and needs the funds to keep it great. The Endowment Fund is the first of a few pushes that seek to achieve that, and to set up the financial security of the college for future generations
Another one of the initiatives led by the student body is starting to feel more open to reviewing our fee structure. The student body this year has been steadfast in supporting and constructing a fee structure for Burgmann which maintains accessibility without compromising its future. That has meant some radically honest conversations with the rest of the student body, led by myself, Suki Waddel and Kalara Pringgoharjono, who sit on the Board.
Part of that fee structure has been a hefty rise in fees to combat some of the financial constraints the college faces. It has also meant that out of that fee rise, a quarter will go towards the establishment of a perpetual offering of ten 50% scholarships every year to ten students. In 3 years’ time, that will mean that thirty students will be supported by a scholarship funded by the college’s own finances.
Final Reflections
When you first arrive, Burg seems somewhere between a mental asylum (vibes), a prison (building) and a submarine (hallways). As you get to know it, suddenly the pipes in the hallways become less like a submarine and more like a home. When you walk out of your room at 2am to go to the bathroom and get by those harsh hospital lights, you think “wow this place is seriously a simulation”. In your third year you begin to despise that fluorescent glow less, a reminder that life outside your room is always on. Burg never turns off, and neither does the real world. It will always be there, tugging along at unwilling teenagers who come to college in search of the fun and chaos of their ‘university years’. Burgmann is a place that tugs you out of your comfort zone, perhaps like getting tugged out to sea by a tugboat. Once it leaves you (the tugboat in this case), you’re equipped for the voyage and not just the sail (sorry for the overly nautical metaphor).
For a long time Burgmann’s slogan was ‘the place to be’, but I think a more accurate slogan of Burgmann’s recent past is ‘the place to become’. Once you leave college you reflect on what it has offered you. You realise that you entered in as an eighteen-year-old that thought everything was figured out, and you left as a 21-year-old realising that you have so much more left to find. You also realise that no opportunity is too small to aspire to. As Milly Wallis-Hughes, a current student, reflected on at our recent Back to Burg Weekend, Burgmann is a place that teaches you to say yes. For a young person, there is no greater gift.
BRA dedicates the $10,000 donated to the college Endowment Fund to the students that didn’t get the full offering over the years of the pandemic. We hope that this $10,000 will support the many future students to experience the place that we’ve all come to love. Assuming an 8% return on the College’s recently established fund, managed by a professionalised investment committee, this BRA donation will grow to be a $689,000 slice in the endowment fund in 55 years’ time, that will make sure that Burgmann exists as a place to become for many more years to come.
I encourage all members of our community to think seriously about also contributing to the Burgmann College Endowment Fund. Every student council member this year has donated at least $10 to the fund, a $10 slice that will grow to be $689 when the college turns 110. We did that to show that students are passionate about keeping Burgmann sustainable for the future and making sure that the things that Burg has given to us continue to be granted to the many generations to come.
Euan Maclean
2026 BRA President
