I believe I said some time ago that the Student Assembly was on course of hitting an iceberg. I think I’ve spotted what that iceberg may be…
At last night’s SA meeting, Nicole Mendolera, the SA Finanical Vice President gave us some grim news. Off Campus College Transport (“OCCT”), the organization which runs the blue buses, are going to need a lot more money to stay running in the near future. The insurance company which covers OCCT has merged with another insurance company, and as a result, OCCT’s insurance went up from about $30,000 to somewhere closer to $100,000. These numbers are by no means exact, but as you can plainly see, this is a real problem. Add to this, at the same meeting, Harpur’s Ferry, the campus’s student-run EMS organization, has asked the SA to give it a separate line item for equipment maintenance (coincidently, getting a line item means getting guaranteed money from each student who pays the activity fee.) That’s another $20,000 that needs to be found. Even though the dissolution of SASU gives the SA about $25,000 or so… these 2 budget demands are still very high, and it could cause students in the know (and pissed off this money is getting thrown around like this) to react unfavorably. And with Elections coming up (and Elections are good for at least one scandal), I know things are going to get hairy everywhere the SA can possibly see.
The SA can’t just pull $70,000+ dollars out of its ass: money the SA allocates to student groups comes from a Student Activity Fee, which is currently set at $78.50. This fee is paid (I beileve) once a semester (it could be once a year, but I’m not too sure. I just tried to look it up in the SA Archives, but they are incomplete and of no help to me), and it’s a mandatory fee which gets renewed every 2 years via campus-wide refferenda. So, it makes sense that in order to increase the amount of money OCCT can get, the SA needs to increase the total amount of money it recieves from students. The proposed increase is (again, I believe) $5. And, to make up the difference (since that increase alone won’t cover the costs), OCCT will need to be trimmed down: removing the most unused runs, cutting hours, etc. Hopefully, student groups don’t get their money allocations reduced. I’ve been told they won’t, but I’m still a bit leary.