You are definitely wise to contact an attorney on this, but if you would like to try some background research on it, a good place is the Lexis Academic database, which is available at many large academic libraries, including Bard College. But there appears to be very little that comes close to discussing the specific matter of Student Governments' gifts to individuals.

Once you get into Lexis Academic, click on Legal Research and then Law Reviews if you want heavy duty legal articles - there may be lots of links to related cases in these reviews. Searching [student government] and [student funds], I got 23 hits - adding the word [political] in "Focus" only removes one of those 23.

[student government and charitable contributions] in Law
Reviews, "all dates" gets 7 hits, primarily on fairness of
funding specific groups, speakers, etc.; also the issue
of "indecent" speech by student groups in public schools and
the School Board's rights to control it. [student government
and budget and appropriations] gets 45 hits — seems to be
more on fairness of appropriations to varied groups,
limitations on individuals' rights to refuse to have their
money go to groups they disapprove of, relation of these
issues to labor unions' uses of agency fees (paid by non-
members). [student fees and tax exempt status] gets 34 hits;
[student government, non profit] gets 46 — again, mostly free
speech and fairness issues (no private individual gifts).
[student government, illegal and donations] gets 22 hits, but
not on private gifts.

I tried [student government] and [student fees] in Lexis /
Legal Research / Tax Law , but had no luck on gifts to private individuals. But [gifts and tax exempt and individuals] in Internal Revenue Code may be worth a look — for example, in the parts of Sect 501 and 503 that come up on that search. Possibly a call to the IRS might get some interesting feedback. 1-800-829-4933, the business questions line, would probably be a place to start. www.irs.gov didn't seem to be too promising for this highly specialized question. Their FAQ at www.irs.gov/faqs/index.html might be worth a more careful look if you have some time to explore.

Another source of background on this issue is looking for
the "fine print" in the
Bard Student Handbook. There seems to be nothing obvious on the pages that talk about the Student Association and its appropriation of funds (starting around p.186 - p.80 of the PDF navigator). But on page 116 (about page 7 or 8 on the PDF navigator bar) it has a disclaimer: "The provisions of this handbook are not to be regarded as an irrevocable contract between the student and Bard College or its officers and faculty. The College reserves the right to make changes affecting admission procedures, tuition, fees, courses of instruction, programs of study, faculty listings, academic grading policies, and general regulations."

The
Bard Catalog does not seem to have any similar fine print — but a careful scanning of it might be wise. Finally, depending upon campus and student "politics", another possible lead might be the
Trustee Leader Scholar program . Since these students work
with the Bard administration, they might have some insights
on who to contact to most quickly get a copy of official
Trustees policies on use of student funds. (If there is any
such source on the web, it is deeply hidden, to say the least)

Thanks,

Jim Miller
jmiller2@umd.edu