Multicultural students on the UW-Madison campus have their fingers crossed. At 6 p.m. tonight, the Multicultural Student Coalition, chaired by Tshaka Barrows, will present their proposed budget request to the Associated Students of Madison’s Student Services Finance Committee.
The budget proposal, which comes directly out of segregated fees paid by students each semester as part of their tuition, is expected to be highly controversial due to its nature and size.
With the proposed $977,418, the largest budget request by a student organization SSFC has ever faced, MCSC will attempt to move their organization, and students of color across the campus, into a new sphere of influence. Plans include a newspaper, a new off-campus office and new academic staff.
A first look might incline SSFC members to offhandedly dismiss the MCSC budget, Barrows said, but he said this budget deals very effectively with what he terms a “desperately needed service.”
“This is a very unique and unusual situation,” Barrows said. “We’re trying to create a group that’s going to have a broad impact on a university that needs that impact.”
MCSC wants to step away from the usual diversity-focused programs and establish an elaborate ten-part system to combat what MCSC members see as deep-rooted misconceptions and problems on a predominantly white campus.
The points, as laid out in the budget, are as follows:
-To put together a support staff of volunteers to run and coordinate programs, events and campaigns put on by MCSC and other student of color organizations. This team would work on recruitment, MCSC events, advising and other outreach programs.
-To put together a system to make it easier for MCSC and student of color organizations to gather information relevant to students of color.
-To improve the image of student of color organizations in the media, including newsprint, film, theater and radio. MCSC would hire a staff to increase the role of its newspaper, called DISCOURSE, and to recruit students to organize plays and presentations.
-To work on human resources and development by recruiting, developing and retaining students for MCSC.
-To put together a plan of collaboration with University Housing. MCSC wants to hire administrators to provide housing outreach to students of color, work with housing officials in residence halls and provide more information about housing opportunities for students of color.
-To organize and administer the skills, knowledge and information involved with all aspects of budgeting using student fees. In this point, MCSC would provide information on the segregated fee system and work on future compliance in order to effectively manage their resources.
-To establish a Diversity Education Field Team to organize and administer MCSC’s efforts to enhance ethnic and racial diversity awareness and knowledge through educational workshops, conferences, discussion panels, lectures, meetings, etc. This team would act as a liaison between students of color and other students, as well as UW officials, and make sure injustices do not go unrecognized or unpunished.
-And finally, to establish an “academic affairs” team to ensure the academic success of students of color through tutoring, guidance, and offering information on available internships, volunteer work and scholarship opportunities.
All of these points, Barrows said, are vital to making sure students of color become more satisfied with their school, and that the school becomes more diverse in the future.
“We need to start impacting this campus on a broader scale,” Barrows said. “What we’re trying to do is service [students of color] in all the different ways that throughout the year have been identified as services that are needed.”
The budget request can be broken down even further: MCSC wants $563,200 for hiring, $63,673 in office supplies for their off-campus office, $85,249 for new computer equipment, $11,000 for advertisements, $9,960 for equipment rental, $40,215 for travel, $43,000 for photocopying/printing fees, $22,000 for postage, $79,500 for programming, $69,188 for office space rental, $12,000 for telephones and $16,620 for miscellaneous items.
The budget request is a 756 percent increase from last year’s budget.
“We’re trying to put together an honest request … to allow us to have an impact on this campus,” Barrows said. “There are a lot of one-time purchases in our request.”
Barrows and other MCSC representatives will appear before SSFC tonight to present their budget and answer questions from SSFC members.
SSFC member Scott Spector said he supports the MCSC budget.
“The university only provides you with three credits out of 120 that provide diversity education,” Spector said. “I think that’s too little. I think students should pay about five dollars a semester for diversity on this campus as long as it reaches out to all students on campus.”
Spector said while the budget was massive, it is a unique opportunity to kick-start accountability measures for diversity on the UW campus.
“For them to want to tackle it is an amazing thing,” Spector said. “They’re saying they want to address each of these individual budgets, which has never been done.”
But not all SSFC members are expected to be supportive. There are a number of financially conservative members on the committee, and even many liberals are intimidated by MSCS’s request.
“I really don’t think it will pass at all in its current form,” said SSFC member Brad Ladwig. “There are a lot of things in there that are budgeted way too high.”
Ladwig’s concern was mainly in office and computer equipment, and in MCSC’s desire to move off campus.
“How many students are they going to be able to reach out to if they remove themselves from campus?” Ladwig asked. “Granted, they have a great service, but they’ve just budgeted poorly.”
Barrows said MCSC did not go overboard in its request.
“We’re cautious to the fact that it’s a lot of money, and we’re trying to be flexible with them,” he said. “But it’s a serious request for a serious service. It’s not a joke.”
