The ASI Senate voted yes on the Stanton Amendment on Wednesday, which gives college councils the authority to re-allocate funding for budget cuts to be made to the student organization fund for the 2008-2009 fiscal school year budget.
“If an academic group applies for funds for an event and doesn’t use the grant by the end of that fiscal quarter,” said Sen. Chris Chavez, “the college council would have the authority to take back that money and distribute it elsewhere.”
The student organization fund is controlled by ASI and is used to help fund college councils and non-academic student groups.
ASI Vice President Hironao Okahana proposed an amendment to the Stanton Amendment, which also passed, stating the college councils must re-allocate the funding by Dec. 31 for the fall semester and March 31 for the spring semester. According to Chavez, “the main difference between last year’s budget and this year is relating to the student organization fund, namely, the college councils’ budget.”
Chavez went on to explain that “in each of the seven colleges in Cal State Long Beach, there is a college council which governs over all the academic student groups. These college councils then distribute the funds they receive from ASI to the academic groups so that the groups can have events.”
The issue at hand is that the college councils, for the past three years, have failed to use all of the allocated budget money, which they receive from ASI. According to Chavez, “projections suggest this trend will continue.”
As a result, “the Board of Control (ASI’s funding distribution board) recommended that the college councils’ budget take[s] large cuts,” Chavez said.
The Board of Control said the unused money should be allocated elsewhere, namely in the general student fund, which can be used by any group if they need the money.
“The general student fund has a 90 percent utilization rate,” Chavez said.
If the unused money were not allocated into the general student fund, according to Treasurer Zaira Tinoco and other Board of Control members, the money is not being used and is not serving the students.
Currently, college council funding is based on the population of that specific college. However, “the BOC’s recommendation is to fund the college councils based on what they spent on the most recently completed fiscal year,” Chavez said.
He explained that “in addition to the budget cuts, there will be new designation to fund events: the ‘legacy event designation.'”
Legacy events are those traditional, major campus events. ASI’s definition of a “major campus event” is one that costs more than $3,000 and, according to Chavez, “these events take up a big portion, if not the majority of their budgets.”
Due to the burden that the college councils face when funding these legacy events, ASI would take over in funding the events exclusively.
“However, many of the senators were unsatisfied with that response,” Chavez said. “In their opinion, this would damage the college council’s growth as well as punish them for ‘having a bad year.'”
The Senate debated and voted affirmatively on the following amendments, which will be included in the fiscal budget for the 2008-2009 school year: The Montano Amendment, which would restore 50 percent of the cut to the college council budgets from the student organization grant line item, and the Okahana Amendment (separate to the amendment proposed for the Stanton Amendment) adds to the budget digest that the Senate has found no reason to rejoin the California State Student Association and has no intentions of doing so until they undertake institutional change.
