The Student Services Finance Committee heard the budgets of Badger Catholic and Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group Thursday night, while approving next year’s budget for Sex Out Loud and deferring Greater University Tutorial Service’s funding decision until Monday.
Badger Catholic Chair Nico Fassino brought up several areas of the 2010-11 budget, including raising the budget amount by $5,000 for a speakers series to get higher profile speakers on campus. The proposed budget for Badger Catholic for next year is $125,236.69, up from last year’s budget of $120,547.77.
Fassino hopes to draw more students to Badger Catholic and to the direct services Badger Catholic offers.
“We’re hoping to set up a debate between notable atheists like Richard Dawkins and successful advocates of faith,” Fassino said.
Miscommunications and miscalculations over last year’s Badger Catholic budget were addressed, and Fassino stressed that safeguards had been set up in Badger Catholic’s infrastructure and these miscalculations wouldn’t happen again.
WISPIRG Chair Scott Thompson stressed the need for an additional member of an advocate to the organization’s professional staff which would allow students better access to both statewide and national politics.
“Executive director focuses more on connecting with politicians in the Capitol, while advocates and fellows focus more on our most important campaigns,” Thompson said.
WISPIRG aims to teach students valuable leadership skills, such as planning events effectively, building coalitions and recruiting. According the Thompson, another advocate would help WISPIRG achieve these goals, while allowing students to have more access to some of these more nationwide issues.
“The fact of the matter is global warming won’t be solved by the state of Wisconsin. The biggest decisions are made in D.C.,” Thompson said.
WISPIRG’s proposed budget of $145,694.51 for the fiscal year of 2010-11 was larger than last year’s budget of $126,244.25.
SSFC also made decisions on budgets for two student organizations who presented their budgets to the committee Oct. 12: GUTS and Sex Out Loud.
GUTS budget decision was postponed until Oct. 19 due to some confusion over tuition remission and whether ASM had the jurisdiction to authorize some of the salaries of the directors of GUTS.
Also, a number of budget decisions were discussed but not finalized because of the postponement, including an increase of $1,929.90 for the GUTS webmaster position and a decrease of $344.04 for video editing software, because there was not enough use of these programs to deem them fiscally responsible.
Overall, GUTS budget proposal was $162,130.71, up from last year’s budget of $143,243.24.
SSFC approved funding for Sex Out Loud, with a few minor cuts in airfare costs to fly speakers across the country. Overall, Sex Out Loud only saw less than 1 percent of their proposed budget cut. The new budget for Sex Out Loud for the 2010-11 fiscal year was decided unanimously at $92,279.84.
“Overall, the meeting was very productive. There were good arguments and debate,” SSFC Chair Brandon Williams said.
Next Monday, the committee will meet to decide the budgets of GUTS, Badger Catholic and WISPIRG.
