ASR misses deadline to submit new proposal to trustees

ASR proposes to increase Student Activity Fee due to deficit, misses January deadline

by Alecia Jarrett

The Association of Student Representatives’ proposal to increase the Student Activity Fee for the next school year will not be reviewed for approval until fall 2011 and cannot take effect (if approved) until fall 2012, due to the fact that ASR missed the deadline to submit a written proposal to the Board of Trustees.

Emmalee Bannon, president of ASR, blamed time constraints for the representatives’ failure to meet the deadline.

“We didn’t have enough time to do everything that needed to be done,” Bannon said.

Allen Trang, senior ASR senator, said the proposal was crucial because ASR currently has a deficit of funds. The proposal would have helped eliminate this deficit.

“As of Tuesday night’s meeting, we had approximately $3,100 to allocate between now and September, and we’ve already allocated upwards of $3,000 for this semester,” Trang said.

According to Bannon, the proposal was supposed to go to Mark Detterick, vice president of Fiscal Affairs, who was then to give it to the Board of Trustees at its January meeting. The board would then come up with the budget for the next academic year.

The proposal was the responsibility of Kate Fulkerson, vice president of ASR; Bannon; Wayne Davis and Trang, senior ASR senators; David Tuttle, interim vice president of Student Affairs and Raphael Moffet, director of Campus and Community Involvement.

Trang said that the proposal was divided into two components: one being to raise the Student Activity Fee from $90 to $111, and the other being to redistribute the way the funds are allocated.
According to Trang, under the proposal, 8 percent of the Student Activity Fee funds would go directly to Fiscal Affairs, which would then cover the costs of athletics and the outdoor pool. ASR would continue to deduct 3 percent of the funds for its overhead costs, leaving 89 percent of funds to be allocated to student organizations.

“Essentially, ASR was going to keep 92 percent of the Student Activity Fund, but with that, we were also going to adopt the responsibility of Intramurals,” Trang said.

Currently, the Student Activity Fund is divided into 70 percent going to student organizations, 3 percent to ASR’s overhead costs, 23 percent to athletics and 4 percent to the outdoor pool.

ASR assumed responsibility for allocating funding this year. Harry Yu, a senior ASR senator, blames the low funds on the fact that ASR has no previous data for what events should cost, so it hands out money liberally.

“We haven’t been too conservative about allocating funds,” Yu said. “Most of the time this year, whenever an organization came to us, we just gave them the money.”

But another reason for the deficit is due to the amount of money ASR spends on newspapers like the New York Times and USA Today that ASR provides for students, according to Yu.

“The Collegiate Readership Program has been the main reason of our funding issues,” Yu said.

Apparently, ASR pays for every paper picked up by students. While they are free for students, they aren’t free for ASR.

“We ended up with a huge bill that’s cutting into our costs too much,” Yu said.

According to Tuttle, ASR has drastically reduced the number of papers ordered from these publications as a result of its lack of funding.

Bannon said ASR is considering dropping the program based on student interest.

“I’m actually going to be sending out a survey to students about the Collegiate Readership Program to gauge interest to see if it’s something we really want to do, because it eats up a lot of our budget,” Bannon said.

The program is just “icing on the cake,” according to Bannon.

“Our first duty is to make sure that student organizations can have all the resources that they need,” Bannon said.

But many students in the Big Six student organizations voiced their disappointment with the current funding situation.

Phil Jensen, senior and director of the Student Programming Board, said the hardships faced by SPB are due to ASR cutting funds from the Big Six this year.

“Due to that cut, it’s forced us to put on some of the programs we want to do, just not up to the quality that a lot of students expect and want to see,” Jensen said.

According to Jensen, many students would like to see A-list or B-list bands at the Welcome Week Concert. There is also no room to introduce new events on the limited budget.

ASR’s failure to submit the Student Activity Fee proposal in time disappointed Jensen.

“Personally, I was upset when I heard the fee increase wasn’t going to happen,” Jensen said.

Kate Goldsberry, president of Trinity Diversity Connection, said that TDC has resorted to smaller events and bringing in lesser-known speakers due to the lack of funds.

“It’s really affected our associate groups more, because they’re used to getting money from us,” Goldsberry said.

Chris Cavin, liaison and director of programs of TUVAC, expressed the challenges TUVAC has faced this year without as much money.

“There are new initiatives that would be nice to start, like an awards banquet,” Cavin said. “It’s really hard to start new events when your funding is limited to things that already exist.”

Cavin also expressed his disappointment in ASR.

“ASR hasn’t really followed through on anything that they’ve agreed to do,” Cavin said. “It’s been pretty disappointing to see them suggest ideas and not get them done.”

Trang argued that ASR has been trying to fight the deficit.

“We actually dipped into the Capital Equipment Fund, money meant to be invested into long-term stuff like computers, to help cover last year’s Big Six expenses,” said Trang.

According to Trang, ASR also put $1,500 of their own funding towards student organizations.

Goldsberry said that although groups are getting less money than they’re used to, she knows ASR is working hard.

“ASR is doing a really good job of sharing the pot and trying to make sure all student organizations get money,” Goldsberry said.

Bannon also expressed the difficulties that lie ahead for ASR.

“Next year’s budget will be as tight as this year’s, but it will also give them another round at how we want to approach the changes in the Student Activity Fee,” Bannon said.

Trang said ASR will continue to face some challenges next year.

“They’ll have a challenge from a publicity stand point,” Trang said. “We made so much noise about raising the Student Activity Fee, and next year we’re in the same boat. As a student, I might be disappointed in that.”