UA allocates $1.72M to student gov. groups

Four thousand dollars per minute, or a total of $1.72 million over the course of seven hours- that's how much money the Undergraduate Assembly allocated to various student-government groups at its annual budget meeting this past Sunday evening.

An increase of 6 percent from last year's budget, the $1.72 million was distributed to the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education ($26,000), the Nominations and Elections Committee ($16,700), the Social Planning and Events Committee ($756,000), the four Class Boards ($14,000 for seniors and juniors; $12,000 for sophomores; $7,000 for freshmen), New Student Orientation ($25,000) and the UA itself ($55,000, including funds to support various pre-orientation and other programs).

The remaining $800,000 were given to the Student Activities Council, the umbrella group for over 200 student groups. The allocation, which increased since last year, will account for rising costs for student groups due to rising oil prices and other reasons.

Major changes from last year's budget included a highly-debated cut in the amount of funds allocated to the Preceptorials Committee of SCUE in an effort to limit what the UA deems as excessive spending for the Wine Tasting Preceptorial. In spite of the funding cut, the preceptorial committee has pledged not to cut that particular program. Considered the "flagship" course of the program with extremely high demand, Wine Tasting costs $3,700 for the 20 randomly selected students.

The biggest change to the budget was a contentious 30-percent increase in allocations to the UA to support the UA Readership Program, which provides free copies of the New York Times to students. Of the program's $20,000 cost, $12,400 was ultimately financed.

Funding for the annual Ivy Council, the conference that brings together Ivy League student governments, was also eliminated, as the UA considers Ivy Council's goals no longer in alignment with its own.

SPEC received a significant increase due to more prominent and expensive speaker events such as Robert Redford for Film and Karl Rove for Connaissance. They are also attempting to combine the Spring Fling and SPEC-TRUM concerts and permanently move the event to Franklin Field.

As none of the four class boards submitted budgets, each received the same funds as last year with the exception of the sophomores, who had money leftover from last year and received less.

The UA receives its yearly budget from the University as a set percentage of the General Fee paid for by student tuition.

During the meeting, the UA also discussed the safety concern of locks on individual rooms in the high rise buildings. University Facilities does not want to increase the current number of random individual rooms with locks due to security reasons.

The Blood Donation Proposal was also reconsidered and will be sent to a newly formed committee consisting of three members from either side to be reworked to address lingering concerns.

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