USA at fault for its financial woes

Mann is director of the ASUCLA Student Union and Student Support
Services.  

By Jerry Mann

Much has been written lately about the current Undergraduate
Students Association budget. USA is crying foul over the proposed
elimination of a five-year or older subsidy of direct maintenance
and utility costs that would now be fully passed through to them.
It might be of some use to examine facets of this predicament that
have not received much press. 

Throughout the years, ASUCLA Services and Enterprises has billed
both USA and GSA for overhead that can be directly attributed to
their operations. These direct costs consist of the entire expense
of the Student Government Accounting Department, maintenance
expenses related to their office space, and the utilities they
consume. This same arrangement applies to the Communications Board,
which oversees the Daily Bruin and various other campus
publications. 

A number of years ago, S&E, at the request of both USA and
GSA, froze the rate at which it recharges the maintenance and
utility costs. From that point forward, they were charged the same
fixed amount for both of these expenses, no matter the actual
outlay incurred to deliver them. Each year at budget time, the
S&E Board would be asked to revisit the subsidy and determine
if it should be continued. Each year it was.

This year, the S&E Finance Committee, for a number of
reasons, asked that the subsidy be eliminated and that USA and GSA
be fully charged for maintenance and utilities. The total increased
expense amounted to roughly $50,000, $10,000 of which was passed on
to GSA with the balance of $40,000 to USA. GSA approved their
budget with the increased costs on May 8th. USA has refused to pass
their budget with this increased expense as it leaves them with
very little money ($57,000) to allocate to the elected officers and
commissioners and the many student organizations that will request
base budget from this pool of funding. 

It is important to note that if the entire amount of the subsidy
were re-instated, this would still leave USA with less than
$100,000 to allocate. This then is the true crux of the problem.
Various members of USA have stated that S&E mismanagement and
lack of strategic planning has created this crisis. I would argue
that this accusation is misplaced. 

Essentially, USA has not increased the base, or the membership
fee as it is known, which is responsible for funding all of their
base budget activity, since 1982. Over the course of the last 20
years, this failure to increase their base resources has led to the
current situation where the effects of inflation and USA’s
increased demands for service (computer center, elections,
transportation and telephone to name a few) have left them with
insufficient resources to allocate. 

Equally critical has been the increase in the number of requests
submitted to USA for programming funds and base budgets as a direct
result of Supreme Court rulings (Smith v. Regents and Rosenberger v
Rectors of the University of Virginia), which have greatly expanded
the pool of organizations eligible for funding.

Not only has the base fee not been increased for 20 years, it
has been nearly 10 years since any of the programming fees were
increased and 15 years since the fee for Campus Events and Cultural
Affairs Commissions was increased. A closer inspection actually
reveals that the bulk of fee increases ($9.50 out of $14.09) since
1990 actually went to the Campus Retention Committee, the Community
Activities Committee and the Student Initiated Outreach
Committee.

There is no debating the value these three committees bring to
the campus, and yet none of them directly contribute to campus-wide
organizations and programming nor to the base operation of the
Undergraduate Students Association. S&E has been accused of
forsaking its mission of supporting programming and student
organizations by forcing this additional expense on USA. But
isn’t it also USA’s responsibility to provide that same
support, as is stipulated by their guiding documents? GSA has
recognized this need by increasing their fee for base budget and
programming twice in the last two years. 

In 1995, S&E faced a situation similar to the one USA does
today. At the end of that fiscal year, S&E lost over $400,000.
It would not be until 2001, as a result of hard work, cost cutting,
the elimination of 40 or more full-time positions, and a continuing
search for new sources of revenue that S&E would finally return
to financial stability. It is now the time for the members of USA
to roll up their sleeves and do the real work that needs to be done
in order to restore their budget to the level of financial
stability that this campus deserves.