At Monday night’s Student Association meeting, the gallery was nearly full with members of many student organizations, including the NAACP, University Union, Kalabash, 360 Degrees magazine, and Phi Beta Sigma, to question SA’s budget allocation for their events or publications.

The meeting quickly erupted into arguments, shouting, and tears, and many students then realized that the SA allocation of the student activity fee, like in past years, was not perfect.

But after the assembly finished voting on each finance board recommendation of how much money to give each student organization, formalities disappeared, tension abated and discussion began of how to solve – or at least improve – the flawed process.

‘People seem to be taking a more active role in what we do, which is what we’ve been trying to do all semester,’ said SA President Andrew Lederman. ‘A lot of it concerns the administration – how we interact with student organizations – all things we’re looking to address. But we don’t want it to be just SA only. We need their input.’

When certain organizations receive such extreme lump sums of money, like University Union Concerts received $60,000, and others receive nothing at all, the distribution seems far from equal or fair, said Maria-Veronica Garibay, cultural chair of La LUCHA and sophomore broadcast journalism major.

‘It’s obviously not a level playing field here,’ Garibay said.

But this year, even the larger organizations took a hit in their budgets.

‘We had to cut so many programs,’ said SA Comptroller Maggie Misztal. ‘A lot of money went to University Union but if you look at what they requested, they got a huge cut. They got $10,000 less than I’ve ever seen.’

Organizations face a chicken-and-the-egg situation, Misztal said. Because the finance board considers the past success of an organization’s events when granting them funds, it tends to grant bigger organizations more money. But smaller, newer organizations can only become bigger if they receive more funds in the first place.

‘(The Haitian-American Student Association) could have brought Wyclef Jean, but UU has proven that it can bring more people to its events,’ Misztal said.

But the finance board was not consistent in basing the success of an event on its attendance, Garibay said. La LUCHA’s events frequently sell out, and students and members of the Syracuse community attend.

‘Maybe SA members could be required to attend these events to see who’s there,’ Garibay said. ‘That’ll let them see for themselves, and actually be able to know.’

If organizations co-sponsor activities, then more could be satisfied, they could attract a broader audience, and budget dollars would not be stretched as thin, said Travis Mason, SA vice president.

‘Greek organizations shouldn’t appeal just to the greeks, and Hillel shouldn’t just appeal to Jewish students,’ Mason said.

The board seemed to cut funds from organizations that target minority organizations, said Michael Ho, treasurer of the Hong Kong Cultural Organization. But if these organizations lose funds, then they cannot fund events and become less involved in the university community.

‘SU says, ‘we have diversity, we have diversity,’ but without these groups, there’s no diversity,’ Ho said. ‘We are one of the most cliquish campuses, and we can’t break the bonds or barriers without these groups.’

But the problem of budget allocating does not end with which organizations get how much money. The accountability of the finance board members, their decisions of how much to allocate each organization, and the process of how they are elected must also be analyzed, SA officers and many student organization members agreed.

Members of the gallery questioned how assembly members could make their decisions about whether to approve an organization’s budget so quickly, without considering why and how the cuts were made.

‘They forced SA to scrutinize the actual allocations, instead of just saying ‘yes’ or ‘no,” said Frank Esson, president of the African-American Male Congress and former finance board member.

But the assembly can trust that the finance board members made smart decisions about how much to allocate each organization, because they elected the members and know they will take their job seriously, Lederman said.

The elections of the finance board members, however, were rushed and shallow, so one cannot be sure that they have the best judgment, Esson said.

The assembly did not ask the candidates enough questions of why they wished to be a finance board member, nor took the time to listen to their responses to questions, Mason said.

‘I wasn’t too happy with the way the assembly chose the finance board,’ Mason said. ‘It didn’t seem like they put much effort into the elections.’

After the finance board makes its decisions of what to recommend for each organization, it should prepare a report of their decisions about a week before the voting SA meeting, said Jennifer Johnson, a former SA member and member of the Caribbean Student Association. Assembly members could then review the recommendations and prepare questions or concerns.

The board would also explain why they made certain cuts to some organizations’ requests, so they could avoid or amend those sorts of requests the next year.

‘That’s a great idea, to have that rationale on paper so you don’t have to fumble over numbers later,’ Lederman said.

The results of each organization’s budget requests and recommendations for each year are kept on file in the SA office, but recording how each finance board member votes on each request could become difficult, Lederman said.

But if students have the demand for it, then SA should provide those explanations, Mason said.

‘The student fee is the student’s money, and it’s important to know where the student’s money is going,’ Mason said. ‘You should know how the finance board members vote and how they pick where the money will go.’

But the problem of accountability in voting does not begin with the finance board members but instead with the financial codes that they abide by, Mason said. If interpreted the way they are written, the codes allocate more of the student fee money to larger organizations than it does smaller organizations, because larger organizations tend to host events that attract more students.

‘We all need to sit down and examine the codes, together,’ Mason said.

The financial codes also state that the student activity fee should only be given to organizations as a last resort, after they have researched other funding options.

If organizations were required to document that they had checked other funding resources, such as alumni donations, grants, academic departments or fund-raising activities, then SA could possibly be more generous to those that proved they had no other options beyond the student fee, Lederman said.

‘It benefits us in the end because it forces other groups to do more work in finding other resources,’ Ho said. ‘The larger groups always get their funds, but it’s just giving the rich more money and the poor less money.’

HKCO, which received $100 out of their requested $248.99, now plans to look for research grants and other means of funding, Ho said.

After the voting at the meeting, Mason and other officers explained to the gallery members that they could only do as much as they were permitted by the administration, and that the administration has not been attentive to students’ needs.

‘Where students are on the priority list has gone down, and we’re not number one, we’re more like five or six,’ Mason said. ‘So what is the priority of the student-centered offices on campus?’

The university has spent much more of its time working to improve its reputation and image, and emphasize the four core values beyond the university, Lederman said.

‘This student-centered research university isn’t student-centered,’ Lederman said.

Two days before the finance board budget requests were due, SA learned that room costs had increased by 5 percent, and officers were upset that they had not learned earlier because student organizations needed to factor those costs into their budgets, Mason said.

‘There needs to be a mutual effort from the administration’s side to extend a hand to students,’ Mason said. ‘If they don’t, we’ll continue to be left out of the loop.’

When student organizations want to plan an event, they meet with Anthony Otero, assistant director and box office manager, about what they want to do, Otero said. Then they formulate a price estimate of the event in the spring, before the SA budget results, and in the fall, they meet again and re-evaluate the original estimate.

‘Very rarely do people say, ‘SA didn’t give us enough money,” Otero said. ‘It maybe happens once out of 20 times. Usually SA is good at funding our estimates.’

But SA officers believe that somehow outside costs must decrease, while understanding that certain options, like paying for facility costs, aren’t realistic.

‘The university is in a huge budget crunch right now, and while I agree that costs are skyrocketing and I’d definitely like to find a way to fund discounts, I don’t know how to make them pay that,’ Lederman said.

None of the SA officers wish to burn any bridges between SA and the administration. They instead hope that bridges will be built and strengthened, once the new chancellor, Nancy Cantor, takes office.

‘She seems to me that she puts students at the top of her priority list,’ Lederman said. ‘Now is the time for change, and sweeping changes for the university.’

Published on April 22, 2004 at 12:00 pm