ASG budget allocations

First step in spring budget approval completed Dec. 12 with a quick turnaround

Mikaela Foehr / News Editor / The USD Vista

The last Associated Student Government (ASG) Senate meeting was centered around one thing: the spring budget. On Dec. 12, the senators met in Solomon Hall to review allocations made by the ASG Budget Committee, and decide whether to approve those allocations as they stood. However, the presentation of the lump sum allocations by Budget Committee Chair George Saunderson was met with uncertain silence by most of the senate.

The Budget Committee, with approval from the senate, has roughly $1.2 million to allocate annually among student centers, the Torero Program Board, and ASG funding initiatives. After the fall semester, there was just over $616,000 to distribute among the three divisions.

Though the Budget Committee spends an extended period of time and effort combing through proposals from each of the divisions, they still need ASG’s final approval to move forward in finalizing and creating specifics for the budget. This process requires the senators to be familiar with the structure of the proposed budget, meaning they should review the budget beforehand.

This proved difficult for a number of reasons. Firstly, the senators only received a detailed version of the budget, revised from a general version sent previously, at 9 p.m. on Dec. 11, the night before the meeting, heavily restricting their time to review it. Secondly, not all of the student senators may have chosen to take the time to review the budget, and even if they did, they may not have the background knowledge to understand and ask questions about it.

Justin Daus, one of the few senators who spoke up during the meeting, admitted during the session, “I really don’t know how to process all of this information, it’s a lot.”

Saunderson attempted to shed light on how the allocations were decided by explaining the budget committee’s thought process.

“We went line item by line item, considering how many students will be reached by each event, and from there, considering how much money they are asking for,” Saunderson said.

He later added that the committee asked that the proposals from each center or organization be ranked by importance, an attempt to gain insight into the priorities of organizations that the members of the Budget Committee may not be familiar with.

Although this was the protocol for the various centers and the ASG budget initiatives, the Torero Program Board did not have listed proposals in the budget, which was concerning to some senators.

“I, and a few other senators, did not like that TPB’s budget wasn’t broken down like the others, especially since they got almost all the money they asked for,” Daus said in a later interview.

Although some senators had real concerns and questions about some of the lump-sum allocations, there was a clear degree of pressure to approve the budget that day, as is. If the budget was not approved during the senate session, emergency meetings would ensue for both the Budget Committee and the senate before the weekend as the semester ended the next day.

“If (the senate) decided (they) wanted to alter funding, the Budget Committee would have to meet tonight, which getting eight people to meet is already difficult, and our quorum is set at 100%,” said Saunderson on the issue, also noting that he was “not necessarily pushing for approval.”

This time constraint was not appreciated by some senators, including Daus who spoke to this during a later interview.

“We are trying to do our due diligence, but motivation was being used that if we did find something wrong and denied the budget, then it would just be another burden for all of us to bear, so we might as well approve it as is,” Daus said.

The ASG Senate did approve the spring budget allocations during the session, with a stipulation for one budget item. The budget item in question was a proposed Multicultural Night Step Show presented by Fraternity and Sorority Life. Senator Chidiebele Okaru was concerned about the execution of this event since step shows are historically black events, and Fraternity and Sorority Life organizations on USD’s campus are largely made up of white students. Though there are multicultural fraternities and sororities on campus, the budget item did not specify which organizations would be involved in the event’s planning. Considering this, Okaru proposed to “Approve the Spring 2020 budget with the condition that the Fraternity and Sorority Life collaborates with the Black Students Commons to plan the event Multicultural Step Show,” which passed with overwhelming support.

Going forward into the semester, Saunderson and the Budget Committee are planning ways to give the senators more time to work with and contemplate the specifics to the budget allocations, which the senators will be working on during the beginning of this semester. On the other side, senators attended a mandatory training on Feb. 1, intended to teach them the necessary skills to carry out their jobs to the best of their ability, on behalf of their student constituents.

The later part of the session showcased a working draft of an Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Committee Action Plan, modeled after one that the University of St. Thomas recently implemented. With this plan, the ASG Senate hopes to look at a number of issues facing students, particularly students of color and students who identify as LQBTQ+, and take concrete steps to begin rectifying those issues. According to the Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Committee Chair, Jesse Magaña, the senators have been working on the plan over Intersession and will continue working on it, with hopes to unveil it later in the Spring 2020 semester.

The next ASG Senate meeting will be held on Thursday, Feb. 6 in Solomon Hall, from 12:15 p.m. to 2 p.m. during dead hours.