Quality, not slates, key in budget allocations

I would like to respond to the letter written by Robbie Hurwitz
(“USAC budget allocations unfair,” Sept. 30). First I
would like to address the fact that, as an alumnus, Robbie Hurwitz
was not an active participant in the base budget process this year,
and was not able to see many of the steps made by the Budget Review
Committee to guarantee fairness in the budget’s
distribution.

Every organization was given ample notice of the priorities the
BRC would be assessing when deciding the funding. Therefore, each
organization had the opportunity to highlight these aspects of its
programming in its base budget application, as well as in its
hearings.

Secondly, I think it is important to note that a “cursory
glance” alone is not enough to analyze the quality of the
base budget proposals. Each member of the BRC spent over 100 hours
reading through proposals, holding budget hearings, and
deliberating in a fair way to assign groups their budgets. This
amount of time was required to ensure that we had properly assessed
the quality of each proposal and its ability to follow the rules
for using student fees (for example, they can’t be used for
gifts or food for UCLA students). We also made sure the proposals
offered programming open to many students and that they facilitated
the main three goals of the UCLA campus: academics, research and
service. We wanted to make sure the organization offered something
that would supplement students’ education at UCLA.

It is also important to address the issue of slate politics.
Hurwitz claims that groups associated with a slate are given the
majority of funds, while other groups are punished, but I disagree.
As a member of council who ran independent of slate affiliation,
there are no groups “associated” with myself, so when
assessing a proposal, the only thing I looked for was the quality
and the benefit the programs would provide to UCLA students. When
the BRC came together to discuss the funding allocations, it was
clear that slate affiliations did not bear on our deliberations.
Whether or not one of my colleagues ran under a slate, they were
looking at the proposal’s quality instead of the
“association” of the organization the proposal
represented. Overall, my assessment as an independent was very
similar to others’ evaluations.

Finally I would like to address the issue of who should be
assigning base budgets. Base budget consists of mandatory student
fees, so it is imperative that students be the ones to say how this
money is spent. The majority of our student fees go into programs
with little or no student input, but base budget is unique in that
students make the final decision on how that money is spent. A
faculty or adviser from the Center from Student Programming would
not be as effective as a student in determining what type of
programming UCLA students would like to see. It is important that
students are kept involved in the decisions of their campus,
especially funding.

In conclusion, I stand by my comment that this year’s base
budget was made not through slate politics, but through the quality
of the proposals.

Schreiber is the 2003-2004 Community Service commissioner
and a fourth-year neuroscience and history student.