ASUCLA Board of Directors recap – Jan. 27

Associated Students UCLA is a multimillion-dollar organization that provides student services and activities that the university does not fund. It oversees the Undergraduate Students Association Council, Graduate Students Association, Communications Board, campus services and enterprises. Board of Directors meetings are monthly and open to the public.

Executive reports

• Lena Riess, chair of the Finance Committee, said an auditing firm reported last week that all of ASUCLA’s financial statements were fairly represented, and needed no major corrections. She added ASUCLA granted UCLA Student Media, which includes the Daily Bruin, $250,000, for the forum to approve.

• Undergraduate representative Nathan Glovinsky from the Service Committee recapped the committee’s progress to date and discussed football and basketball ticket and concessions sales. He added he hopes to do a more casual presentation of the T-Shirt design contest to GSA and USAC with no ceremony.

• Glovinsky added the Student Union at UCLA will visit University of Southern California and UC San Diego’s student unions on March 4.

Financial statements

• ASUCLA Executive Director Bob Williams said stores had a loss of $170,000 at the end of November. He added ASUCLA has not had a month like this before. The overall incomes in all areas were short, he said.

• Williams added that maintenance employees are still negotiating their contract, so the positive balances should not be taken at face value. He also said there was an overall decrease in $239,000 in income across stores in November.

• Williams said there was a much better income in December, and added dynamics are different every month. He said stores generally saw positive earnings in December – in particular, restaurants went down in sales, but services jumped back.

• There was an increase in the net income by $11,000 in December, which is a rebound from November, he added. There was a fallback on e-commerce sales, and textbook sales continued to struggle.

• He added the computer store had very high sales during December because of discounted sales, but marginal sales were not as strong.

• Williams added there will be a markdown of Adidas products through the end of the year as UCLA Athletics prepares to switch from Adidas to Under Armour.

• Williams said there was an increase in concessions sales from basketball games in January, and the computer store made a lot of sales because a new Apple product was stocked.

• ASUCLA shops in North Campus shops had less sales in January than they did in December, which may be related to the rainy weather, he said. He added ASUCLA has started the budgeting process, but does not believe it will make the budget for this year yet.

Action items

• The board approved the Student Media debt deferment.

• The board also approved the audits made by the audit and assurance services company KPMG.