By Jonathan Smith, Editor in Chief
The Students’ Association on Wednesday unanimously approved a semester budget of $116,500, which includes more than $40,000 for 33 student groups and organizations.
As has become custom, student groups requested much more than Congress had available; this semester, groups asked for $100,000 when they submitted budgets to treasurer Tyler Cosgrove by noon Jan. 19.
Cosgrove met with each group Jan. 19 and 20 to help him understand the group’s needs and priorities.
“The meetings make it easier to determine what can be cut and what should be accepted,” Cosgrove said.
He also said the meetings give him an opportunity to explain how funding works to students new to the process.
Using guidelines he devised last year, Cosgrove reviewed each budget, cutting out or reducing requests made by groups.
The guidelines set limits on how much SA will fund for certain items, and they detail what items SA will not fund. For example, SA will pay up to $150 for airplane tickets, $55 per night at hotels and 50 percent of conference and registration fees. SA will not fund internal social club functions or personal items for students such as T-shirts.
After applying those guidelines to each group, Cosgrove said he had to cut very few other items from groups’ budgets. A few groups received full funding, and one had 86 percent of its request cut, but all groups received an average cut of about 60 percent from their requests.
Cosgrove said he has not heard many complaints from groups about feeling slighted in this semester’s budget. He said it is important for groups to remember that one group isn’t entitled to more funding because of its cause, and changing one group’s funding also affects 32 other groups asking for money.
This semester’s budget also included $12,500 toward the newly created SA endowment fund, which one day will help fund Congressional budgets. The endowment now contains $20,000.
Congress will also pay the last of four installments of a $29,500 loan from the university administration that SA took after it discovered it owed that much money for the electronic scoring bowling system in the Recreation Area of the Campus Center in fall of 2004.
The budget apparently contained few surprises, as Congress members clarified a few points with questions but bypassed the opportunity to debate elements of the budget before quickly moving on to the unanimous vote.
This was Cosgrove’s fourth Congressional budget to prepare as executive treasurer of SA. During the past two years, Cosgrove said he believes the budgeting process has improved.
“Our understanding of what should and shouldn’t be accepted into the budget has progressed greatly,” Cosgrove said, recalling that older SA budgets almost seemed to cut groups’ funding arbitrarily, and officers would not inform groups why budgets had been cut.
Chief development office Erin Dimas also announced during the meeting that several members of Congress created a petition to the university to open the Bean on Sunday nights instead of Sunday mornings. To indicate interest among students to the administrators, freshman and sophomore senators and residence hall representatives will have petitions during the next week for interested students to sign.
Congress wants at least 1,000 student signatures on the petition to present to administrators.
