Editorial

The Undergraduate Student Association Council chose the wrong
year to start a budgetary revolution. Despite being given roughly
$30,000 less in discretionary funds by the Associated Students of
UCLA than last year’s council, it is trying to drastically
increase the amount of funding some groups receive.

In an attempt to create impartiality in the budget review
process and equality among fund recipients, the Budget Review
Committee rated eligible student groups’ performance in five
different priorities and instituted a $4,000 cap on any
group’s allotment.

At first glance, the system sounds like an excellent way to
ensure funding is received by a diverse group of student
organizations. But the system has created an increase in funding
for groups with minimal impact on campus and reduced funding for
perennial campus presences like Asian Pacific Coalition, African
Student Union, MEChA, and Samahang Pilipino by more than 50
percent.

Last year’s process was entirely arbitrary, and the system
certainly needed some modifications. But to give money in a year of
cutbacks to groups like the UCLA Chess Club ““ which is
invisible to everyone outside its small membership circle ““
is absurd, especially since it comes at a cost to established
groups with a historically large scope. The Inter-Fraternity
Council and Panhellenic Council also received substantial increases
in their budgets despite the fact they don’t rely on USAC
funding and their membership is exclusive of the campus at
large.

Everyone on USAC should share blame. While a maximum cap on
group funding may be necessary to work within the budget, the $500
minimum cap put on groups receiving funding is superfluous. It
creates the impression all groups are entitled to at least $500
regardless of their past performances. As it turns out, every group
that applied and met all minimum eligibility requirements received
at least this amount. Two groups ““ the UCLA Chess Club and
Iranian Students Group ““ were funded despite failing to fully
meet all established criteria. They also failed to properly
consider need when distributing funding, resulting in the
aforementioned increases for IFC and the like. Without these
increases to unneedful or undeserving groups, the BRC could have
pushed the budgets of campus stalwarts slightly closer to the
amount they are used to receiving.

Furthermore, one of the BRC’s criteria should have been
split in two. “Size and scope” combined the
easily-quantifiable group membership size and the ambiguous group
outreach into a single category. This lumping tended to favor
larger groups with limited outreach over smaller groups with a
large outreach because a group’s size cannot be tampered
with, while its scope is up for debate.

If the BRC had been composed of members supposedly interested in
the budget in the first place, they likely would have done a better
job. Many of the committee members, all appointed by USAC President
David Dahle, are commissioners whose primary job is campus
programming. Some of the members even stated during last
spring’s Editorial Board endorsement hearings their chief
interest lay not with the student group funding process, but with
improving their own commissions. And yet they were approved for the
BRC by a general USAC vote. Someone should have demanded a general
representative or vice president ““ council members whose job
descriptions, unlike commissioners, include maintaining an accurate
idea of cross-campus student group activity ““ be appointed to
the board, but that demand never came.

Instead, groups and their council advocates adversely affected
by the proposed budget are upset about the whole process now. There
are some valid concerns with the new budget, but their complaints
are little more than rancor at receiving such dramatically reduced
funding.

Those upset by the BRC’s proposed budget are ultimately
fighting the wrong culprit. Shortcomings of the budget review
process aside, it’s not USAC’s fault it’s
underfunded. Rather than cause division within USAC, campus groups
and council members should turn their attention to ASUCLA ““
whose budget mess is at fault for all of this in the first place
““ to ensure next year’s budget is more in line with
years past. The BRC cannot do anything to appease these groups if
it doesn’t have any funds to distribute in the first
place.