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SSFC cuts leadership program’s budget
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by Nathaniel Liedl
Tuesday, November 2, 2004
The Student Services and Finance Committee approved one student organization’s budget Monday night, cutting almost $6,000. The group also heard the proposal from one other student organization.
The majority of the meeting was spent debating cuts to the Student Leadership Program’s 2005-06 budget, which was approved at $41,520. A total of nine cuts totaling $5,708 were made to the budget.
The approved budget is up more than $6,000 from the $35,300 allocated for 2004-05.
The majority of the cuts made to the Student Leadership Program’s budget involved food for the organization’s special events. SSFC members agreed food is not an essential component for many of the group’s events.
“[The Student Leadership Program] should not be using food to entice people to come to these events,” SSFC member Barb Kiernoziak said.
The organization’s Last Chance Speaker Series lost $1,400 in funding for food.
Additionally, SSFC cut the food budget for the organization’s management services by $800. Five hundred dollars was also cut from the food budgets for the group’s All Campus Leadership Conference, as well as their membership, training, development and recruiting programs.
The single largest cut made was $2,105 from the Student Leadership Program’s Leadership Summit.
Although SSFC cut almost $6,000 from the group’s proposed 2005-06 budget, the program’s coordinator, Alison Hamer, said the cuts were smart. She said she is happy with the hearing’s outcome because the budget is considerably higher than its 2004-05 budget.
“We are really pleased. The cuts [SSFC] made were substantial and they had good reasoning for them,” Hamer said.
The Student Leadership Program provides leadership education to student groups with the intention of developing leadership skills in their members and student body, according to the University of Wisconsin’s registered student organizations website.
At the meeting’s start, the Asian Pacific American Council presented its 2005-06 budget request of $237,077, which is up more than $30,000 from its 2004-05 allocation.
APAC is an organization that celebrates diversity and aims to create a healthier campus climate, chief administrator of APAC Ron Sung said during the group’s presentation.
Sung said the requested budget increases are mainly for advertising and upgrades for equipment.
APAC’s membership benefits from publications they distribute to increase knowledge about the organization. Sung said more publications could be distributed if their budget is increased.
APAC also needs new computers because the current ones they use are outdated and obsolete, according to Sung.
Anonymous (November 2, 2004 @ 9:01am):
Someone needs to explain to me how a raise in funding from last year's budget amounts to a cut in funding.
Anonymous (November 2, 2004 @ 1:52pm):
The reason that it is called a cut is due to the Fry decision. In that decision the court claimed that prior budget expenses could not be taken into account when evaluating the new budget proposal. Without the ability to compare the prior budget to the new proposal, the proposal stands alone as budget and is thus cut.
Yes I know it makes no sense, but read the court decision.
Anonymous (November 2, 2004 @ 5:32pm):
Thanks for the explanation. It's bullshit, though that's not your fault. Frankly, until an organization gets an /actual/ cut in funding, I don't want to hear any more whining from anybody about how they're not being treated fairly by the SSFC. If anybody's not being treated fairly by the SSFC, it's us students who are forced to cough up nearly $1000 every year to pay for these bloated budgets.
