While Student Government approved Thursday what may be its last budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, a Student Judiciary ruling in favor of Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group may push the debate back until early December.
WISPRIG was granted another chance to prove to the Student Services Finance Committee that it is worthy of student segregated fee funding.
In September, SSFC denied WISPIRG funding because committee members felt the group’s beneficiaries were not primarily University of Wisconsin-Madison students.
SSFC Chair Matt Manes said he will be appealing Student Judiciary’s decision in the next couple of days.
“Student Judiciary ruled with insufficient evidence and they ruled incorrectly,” Manes said.
If Student Judiciary rules against SSFC in the appeal, WISPIRG will have its re-hearing sometime before Dec. 5, Manes said.
However, if SSFC wins the appeal, its budget hearing and approving season will have officially ended Thursday when it approved the Multi-Cultural Student Coalition’s budget of $220,587.
After some debate and alterations, MCSC was approved for the $220,587 for the 2011-2012 fiscal year, which was $5,200 less than what they proposed.
The committee debated and ultimately decided to cut funding that would send five winners of the University of Wisconsin’s Poetry Slam to the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational.
SSFC Vice Chair Michael Romenesko said he did not feel comfortable funding CUPSI with student dollars.
“CUPSI is a competition, it’s an award. If [MCSC] wants to send people they still could though a travel grant or co-sponsor support from the community,” Romenesko said.
The committee also debated whether it should grant MCSC’s request for funding for a Macintosh computer to be used for video and photo editing.
SSFC representative Cale Plamann said the distinction between Macs and PCs for photo and video editing is not as apparent as it was in the past, and that funding them for a PC was more fiscally responsible.
The committee unanimously voted against Plamann, granting the group funding for a Macintosh computer.
Lena Marx, an MCSC leader, said she was ecstatic about the minimal cuts that were made as well as the extra funding that was added to the group’s advertising budget.
Manes said SSFC has added more money to groups’ budget requests this year than they have in the past five years combined.
“These groups are crafting incredibly fiscally responsible budgets and sometimes they even squeeze a little bit too tightly on themselves,” Manes said. “We want to make sure the groups we fund are set up for success.”
Manes said this year’s round of budget hearings went better than they have ever gone in the past.
“The outreach attempts we made to try and get the groups to craft fiscally responsible budgets instead of us reacting to them trying to get as much money as possible has resulted in everybody being more satisfied with the process,” Manes said.
SSFC gave out $1,306,787.60 in funding for budgets for the 2012-13 year. This is down from $1,407,359.92 for the current year.
With the budget season behind them, SSFC will now hold town hall meetings where all students are welcome to come voice their opinions and offer feedback on how student organizations are funded through SSFC, Manes said.
Due to a reporting error, the print version of this story stated MCSC wanted to send five of MCSC’s members to the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. However, the group wanted to send the winners of University of Wisconsin’s Poetry Slam, who could include non-members of the group. We regret this error.
