Student groups respond to budget

The Undergraduate Assembly released its annual budget recommendations on Sunday, which included cuts to the Social Planning and Events Committee to Represent Undergraduate Minorities, SPEC’s Jazz and Grooves Committee and the Philomathean Society.

Leaders of those groups intend to argue their cases at Sunday’s budget hearing.

Overall, the UA saw a 3.76-percent budget increase since last year due to increased funds from the Board of Trustees, but the UA Budget Committee recommended denying SPEC-TRUM the $2,250 it requested to fund the Minority Scholars Weekend — an annual event aimed at attracting minority high school students to Penn.

As for the rationale behind the cut, SPEC President and College senior Dasha Barranik said the program is aimed at prospective — not current — students.

Nevertheless, Wharton senior and Latino Coalition Chairwoman Wendy de la Rosa stressed the weekend’s importance.

“The fact that so much money is going to Spring Fling, but the minority events are capped … needs to be reevaluated,” she said.

De la Rosa hopes to encourage the UA to help fund the project, as the assumption that the Admissions Office will fully pay for the program “is a big assumption to make. It’s a slippery slope, and I don’t know if the UA wants to go there.”

Philo was “puzzled” about being left out of the budget, College senior and Philo moderator Aaron Ecay said.

Every year, Ecay explained, SPEC has requested and has been granted $3,000 for the society to help bring high-caliber speakers to campus.

“I’m nonplussed by what motivation the UA would have for maintaining a cut for a popular event that costs so little money,” Ecay said.

This year, though, SPEC did not submit any request for funding on behalf of Philo, according to College senior and UA Treasurer Sakina Zaidi.

“I’ve spoken to SPEC, and their level of communication … has been frighteningly low,” Ecay said. He spoke with various branches of student government, he added, and “with the exception of SPEC, they have all been very supportive of the Society.”

The body also recommended granting Jazz and Grooves only $11,300 — as opposed to its request for nearly $30,000.

Jazz and Grooves Co-Director and College senior David Saginur and Barannik both declined to comment on the Jazz and Grooves budget.

Another change in the budget is the structure of SPEC funds. Last year, SPEC received a contingency fund of $124,092. This year, its contingency fund is $35,000 — SPEC only requested $25,000 in contingency.

“The short version is, we asked for particular sums that reflect our actual costs,” Barannik said of the drop.

This year, SPEC asked for less than $1,000,000 total, as opposed to almost $1,140,000 last year.

However, Barannik added that the line items were not all funded in full, so SPEC “did not make [the lost contingency funds] up the way we’d wanted to.”

SPEC is “pleased with the general presentation” of the budget but plans to respond to the cuts it has suffered, Barannik said.

Amid the backlash of various student groups, however, members of the UA Executive Board remain optimistic about this year’s budget.

“We prepared the budget three weeks before the meeting,” Zaidi said, “and we did this so we could have open dialogue within the branches. It might be contentious, but our aim is to find a budget that everyone is happy with.”

College junior and UA Chairman Alec Webley agreed. This year’s budget process has been “far and away the most open, democratic, deliberative, participatory budget process ever,” he said. “I’m so thrilled that people are complaining.”

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