Candidates talk financing issues

by Ken Harris

Monday, March 31, 2008 02:03

Three of the four candidates for the Student Services Finance Committee faced off on issues regarding the handling of segregated fees Sunday night in University of Wisconsin’s Grainger Hall.

Current SSFC members Kurt Gosselin and Adam Porton joined newcomer UW freshman Joe French on the debate panel to make the case for why they should be elected to one of the two-year terms on the committee.

SSFC is responsible for making recommendations regarding the distribution of segregated fees in the form of General Student Services Funds to campus groups.

SSFC chair Alex Gallagher was on hand, asking the panelists if they feel it is appropriate for the university to use segregated fees to pay for the building projects like the Union South rebuild and the Memorial Union renovation.

French disagreed with the other two candidates and said it was an inappropriate use of segregated fees.

“I believe there’s plenty of private people — graduates, alumni — who can come up with this money, rather than having to have students 30 years from now having paid $192 … for this Union project,” French said.

Gosselin and Porton said the use of segregated fees for the building projects was acceptable because the student body voted for it, but they had some reserves about the legitimacy of the results of the elections.

Gosselin said student voting rates in Associated Students of Madison elections are about 6 percent to 8 percent, and this is not a “sizable enough” section of the student population, adding the university should require a turnout of 12 percent to 15 percent to make the elections legitimate.

Porton said SSFC does not have control in this case because of the vote by the student body, but added there needs to be a check to prevent UW from “spearheading these projects” and “forcing through these referendums.”

All three candidates shared the opinion that there needs to be more transparency about the spending of the three major non-allocable components to segregated fees, which are services SSFC has no choice whether to fund or not.

These components are University Health Services, Wisconsin Union and Recreational Sports. According to the candidates, SSFC needs better access to their spending to know where the segregated fee money is going.

“The main issue is we don’t know what the issues are,” Porton said. “In terms of what that money’s going for and where we can make cuts as representatives of the student body, it’s almost impossible to amass that sort of detail.”

The candidates also discussed the need for consistency in SSFC’s interpretation of the bylaw that groups need to provide a “significant additional component” to campus in order to be eligible for GSSF funding.

Gosselin said the vagueness of this wording is the main reason he is pushing for a revision of the ASM bylaws.

UW sophomore Tony Nguyen was the only candidate not present at the debate.