After several hours of debate, the Student Services Finance Committee voted to postpone the decision for the budget of the MultiCultural Student Coalition, the organization with the largest budget request the SSFC has approved in the past four years.
According to SSFC Chair Kurt Gosselin, the past two years have seen a steady decrease in the requested funding for MCSC.
MCSC works through programs and workshops to provide diversity education to improve the environment on campus and collaborate with organizations and student groups, said Jamie Yancovitz, financial specialist for MCSC.
“We’re trying to demonstrate the impact we have on campus. It’s amazing to build coalitions and networks, and that’s one of our main missions,” Yancovitz said..
Through the course of the meeting, SSFC cut the two diversity education positions, amounting to $7,057.92, cut five hours from the requested 20 hours per week for the finance specialist, and cut four positions that require 12-hour workweeks.
SSFC Representative Darren Knox said funding the group $154,618 for its full salary budget request would be favoring the group too much.
“If you’re counting for inflation, this would essentially keep them at where they were at for previous years,” SSFC secretary Kyle Szarzynski said. “The group does say they require this position due to the increased workload, due to the inevitable increase of programs from last year.”
SSFC Vice Chair Carl Fergus said the work of the salary-paid positions could be accomplished just as well through the work of volunteers, adding if people were dedicated enough, they would volunteer their time to do the same work.
SSFC zero-funded the organization’s Sundance Film Festival Trip, stating it was based too much on entertainment and not enough on education. Also, $1,150 was cut from honoraria speaker fees for the organization.
“As stewards of the funds, we have to look, we have to find extra money in these budgets and here we don’t have to go searching for it. They’ve given it to us,” Fergus said. “To be fiscally responsible, I’m following what they said was acceptable.”
After the meeting, MCSC members had no comment on the cuts and said they were waiting for Monday’s decision.
SSFC also decided on a budget for Wisconsin Student Lobbyists, a new organization. After having their decision postponed twice, WSL was approved at $64,564. This was $2,343 less than their requested budget of $66,908.
“Given that our budget was almost fully funded, we are very happy,” said UW senior Andrew Wagner. “We put this budget together to be in moderation, the best numbers that we could come up with, nothing excessive.”
WSL is an organization with two main goals: working to help other groups learn how to advocate and lobby on behalf of their own issues and providing advocacy training to anyone on the UW campus, according to Wagner.
