USAC requests $100,000 from ASUCLA to sustain its student group programming funds
By Jillian Beck
Jan. 17, 2012 2:08 a.m.
The undergraduate student government is requesting $100,000 from the Associated Students UCLA Board of Directors to sustain its rapidly dwindling student group programming funds for the rest of the academic year.
Student groups would see a 20 to 40 percent increase in funding if the Undergraduate Students Association Council receives the additional funding from ASUCLA. That would bring funding levels back to where they were before the reduction in fall, said Ronald Arruejo, chair of the USAC finance committee.
In return for the money, ASUCLA is asking the council to create a written policy that will reduce USAC’s reliance on surplus funds in the future.
“I want to see that (change) is actually happening,” said Hironao Okahana, a doctoral student in education and graduate representative on the ASUCLA Services Committee, at the Friday meeting. “We need to make sure this is a one-time $100,000.”
Without the requested funds, a 50 percent reduction to funding for student groups implemented last fall will remain in place, Arruejo said. The reduction took effect after leftover funds from the previous council were much less than originally anticipated.
After years of depending on unused funds rolling over to the next year, the 2009-10 council spent about as much money as they received, passing along a smaller surplus to the next council than usual, said Roy Champawat, director of the UCLA Student Union.
The 2010-11 council went even further, actually shrinking the surplus rather than passing a large amount of leftover funds.
The decrease in unused funds resulted in less funding for student groups on campus this year.
This year’s council is dealing with an inevitable problem, Champawat said. The large amount of leftover funds had to decrease at some point.
About $50,000 from this year’s surplus is expected to be added to programming funds that student groups can apply for within the next two weeks, Arruejo said. This amount is considerably less than in previous years, which led the council to look for additional funding from ASUCLA.
If passed, the $100,000 allocation from ASUCLA would be split between the Contingency Programming Fund and the Undergraduate Student Association Programming Board of Directors’ fund, both of which are sources of funding for student groups.
“We find it very important that we give the amount of money student groups need for their events,” said David Bocarsly, a general representative, at a meeting with
ASUCLA on Friday. “Groups that applied the first few weeks of fall quarter got a lot more (funding) than groups are getting now. We want to be consistent.”
The ASUCLA Services Committee, a subcommittee of the Board of Directors, recommended that the Board of Directors grant the funding request at a meeting with USAC representatives on Friday, pending the final approval of the ASUCLA Finance Committee.
To address the concerns of the ASUCLA board members, the council has begun looking to reform the USAC finance committee guidelines, said Raquel Saxe, Academic Affairs commissioner.
By putting a formal equation in place that takes into consideration the financial situation of the year before to avoid over-allocating, the council hopes to avoid the shortfall in programming funds that they are currently experiencing, Saxe said.
“Hopefully (the reforms) will help maintain some stability over time so that what happened this year won’t happen again in the future,” Saxe said.
USAC representatives will meet with the ASUCLA Finance Committee on Friday at 9 a.m. in Kerckhoff 152 before the Board of Directors votes on the funding request on Jan. 27.
