With a vote on next year’s University of California budget
coming in less than a week, the Student Fee Advisory Committee is
bracing itself to deal with the problem of distributing a projected
$4.7 million cut across all student services.
The committee held a town hall meeting Tuesday to seek input
from students concerning the distribution.
SFAC, a 12-member committee comprised mainly of undergraduate
and graduate student representatives, advises the Chancellor Albert
Carnesale primarily on the distribution of registration fees for
student services on campus.
The committee currently works based on an anticipated 20 percent
reduction, and is trying to determine services that are most
important to students as well as those that will be better able to
shoulder the cuts.
The committee considers the fact that some groups have
alternative sources of revenue while other groups depend solely on
funding by registration fees, according to SFAC Chairman Dean
Gerdeman.
Gerdeman said these fees primarily go into subsidizing people
who work with student services, so that they were “literally
talking about cutting staff and employees.”
Among the biggest recipients of the fees are Student Health
Services, Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center, Student
Psychological Services and Intercollegiate Athletics.
Gerdeman said the Ashe Center and Student Psychological Services
are considered “high-priority” by the Student Affairs
Office, and the committee would recommend substantially less than a
20 percent cut. He said the committee would recommend a larger
reduction for Intercollegiate Athletics.
“Registration fees make up only around 6 to 8 percent of
(Intercollegiate Athletics) funding. “¦ We think they can
afford the cuts because they also have outside sources of
revenues,” Gerdeman said.
He added that an extra cut in the current funding of
Intercollegiate Athletics would be a significant help for other
smaller groups who depend solely on these fees for their
funding.
Along with the lower cuts to SHS and SPS, Gerdeman said an
overall premium increase of $60 per student in the Student Health
Insurance Plan would also be recommended.
The committee feels that raising the annual fee would be better
for students than raising user fee or co-payments, he said.
The committee still has not reached a decision on another large
recipient of the funds, the Center for Student Programming. A more
comprehensive report from CSP on its budget and the impact of a
possible 20 percent cut is needed prior to a recommendation, said
SFAC Vice-Chairman Allende Palma-Saracho.
Some argued that a cut in CSP would cause staff layoffs and
ultimately affect student groups who depend on these advisors to
get through all the bureaucracy.
“I don’t see how the workload can be spread out
anymore among the advisors,” said Leilani Downing, a
fourth-year African American studies student and chairwoman of
Student Initiated Outreach Committee.
Though the committee recognizes the impact that cuts in CSP
funding will have on student groups, Gerdeman said it
“can’t not be cut at all because CSP does receive $1.2
million and it’s going to affect a lot of other groups
otherwise.”
Palma-Saracho said the committee is very concerned with
maintaining job positions despite the cuts. It is working on
finding alternatives for lay-offs, such as not filling any vacant
positions.
Gerdeman said though the committee agrees that the priority is
CSP, it is concerned with the possibility of Carnesale not
approving that recommendation and instead turn to cutting services
they valued.
Julie Orf, a graduate student representative to SFAC, said the
reason the committee has a good record of getting heard by the
chancellor is that they “look at the reality of
things.”
Gerdeman said the committee will not take an extreme position,
but that they would “definitely revisit the idea of putting
more pressure on the Chancellor.”