SAC receives budget data

The body isn't satisfied with the data from the federal government. Student Activities Council leaders finally got their long-sought information on the University's budget yesterday, but the data from the federal government fell short of what they had hoped to learn. SAC Chairperson Steve Schorr, a Wharton senior, had requested the documents September 25 from the Freedom of Information Act office of the federal Health and Human Services Department on behalf of the group. Student government leaders have been trying to find out where money collected by the General Fee -- the approximately $2,000 that undergraduates pay with tuition -- is allocated within the University budget for more than two years. University officials broke the budget down for students last month, in a belated response to a SAC ultimatum, but Schorr had said he wanted more specifics. He hoped to get those from the FOIA request. But after finally finding the 15-page document from the FOIA office in his mailbox yesterday -- a month past the 20 working days the office had promised -- Schorr said it was still "not as much information as I'd hoped for." "It seems like broad categories and large allocations, and it's hard to know what exactly the categories mean," Schorr said, explaining that dollar amounts are listed under categories with coded names. "For example, 'fr sch 4'," Schorr said, reading off the page. "I don't know what the significance of that is." Since no line-item expenditures are detailed in the documents, which only includes information as recent as 1994, Schorr will now ask individual University departments for a breakdown of their budgets, a suggestion Budget Director Mike Masch had made last month. Masch had spoken to SAC in response to the ultimatum the body gave the University in September: either offer information on how the General Fee is allocated in the budget by October 8 or SAC would proceed with the FOIA search. Almost three weeks later, Masch came before SAC and presented a chart of the allocations by departments, or "responsibility centers." After Masch's presentation last month, Schorr told The Daily Pennsylvanian the results were not specific enough. He decided to wait for the FOIA figures before taking Masch's advice and approaching the individual departments -- an approach which had failed two years ago. "When I first contacted [the departments] a couple years ago, they weren't willing to provide the information," Schorr said. "But I'm more optimistic now because the budget director told the SAC body that we can contact them." To help him decipher the government documents, Schorr plans to turn to several sources, including Vice Provost for University Life Valarie Swain Cade-McCoullum, and Time magazine reporter Eric Larson, a College alumnus who wrote an article last year on the University budget using figures he acquired from a FOIA search. Although SAC had originally allocated up to $300 of its funds to pay for the search, the fee only came to $25, which the FOIA office will waive because the request was not for commercial, media or scientific use. FOIA officers explained that the results were delayed because of a miscommunication between Schorr and their office over exactly what kind of information was actually requested. "There was a difference of what we maintain and what he was asking for," explained Darlene Christian, Freedom of Information officer of the Public Health Service, whose office processed the request. The FOIA office can only obtain information that has been submitted to it by a particular institution. "That's what we gave him," Christian said.