Use of student fees puzzling to some

With a $3 million 2007-2008 undergraduate student government budget approved earlier this quarter, some students say they have been wondering how exactly their mandatory student fees are being spent.

Howard Lin, a third-year psychology student, said he does not have any immediate concerns about how the Undergraduate Students Association Council is spending student fees, but the information does not seem readily available, and he would be interested in learning more.

“I really don’t know what they do with it. I think it goes to students somehow and the events they throw. I’m curious where it goes,” he said.

Jerry Mann, director of Associated Students UCLA Student Support Services, said he understands that while the idea of USAC controlling $3 million in student money may make some students wary, there is enough oversight and there are restrictions that funnel this money into the appropriate places.

“A casual look at the USAC budget can be misleading. What looks like a huge budget is actually restricted by the referenda that create the fees,” he said.

Mann also added that only a limited amount of that $3 million is available for use by the council as a whole, since much of it is designated for more fixed operational costs that allow the council to function.

About $750,000 is available for student government operations ““ $500,000 is used for the administrative functioning of the government, and the remaining $250,000 is distributed to commissioners, officers and registered student organizations, Mann said.

He also added that only about $10 of the quarterly $39.91 mandatory student fees actually goes towards running the government, while the rest is given to specific commissions to fund programming for the campus community.

Academic Affairs Commissioner Nat Schuster said he believes there is some oversight of the spending of USAC’s budget, but that not all types of expenditures are reviewed with equal care.

He said for example people have had trouble being reimbursed for the cost of fliers, a minor cost, while much larger costs such as travel expenses of certain student group officers and councilmembers are not examined as closely.

External Vice President Tina Park said the EVP’s office often uses the EVP travel fund, the University of California and United States Student Associations’ travel funds, and the EVP travel grant in order to fund its own travel as well as the travel of students and campus organizations to conferences and meetings.

She added that this money is given directly to her office by mandate of a student referendum that approves the allocation of these funds.

One example of a travel expense is a $1,450 plane ticket to Singapore that Park purchased out of the EVP travel fund.

Park said the requisition form she submitted regarding these costs is available in public records.

Park said she was attending the Asian Pacific Student Services Association Conference and gave a presentation about the structure of the UC system and the UCLA student government to representatives from universities around the world.

UCLA is a member of the Asian Pacific Student Service Association and Park was nominated by the university to be the official representative of UCLA.

She also added that she debated about whether to attend this conference, purchased the ticket with her own money before reimbursement, and tried to find cheap flights.

Park said she believes these kinds of events can be crucial for the development and training of those involved in campus organizations.

Part of a USAC guideline states that travel using USAC funds must be done as cheaply as possible, but Schuster said this is often not the case because these guidelines are ambiguous and not enforceable.

Schuster said he helped work to limit spending on honoraria, or payments to presenters and speakers, as well as travel and retreat costs through the introduction of financial guidelines.

He also said there were bylaw changes this year that set up guidelines for USAC commission offices to create a funding board to oversee the allocation and spending of their office-specific funds.

Currently, the EVP’s office and the Cultural Affairs Commission are not in compliance with these bylaw changes, though there is no set time frame by which they must do so.

Park said she does not agree with these bylaw changes and prefers to be flexible in her ability to grant funding, so she is leaving the creation of the funding board to next year’s external vice president.

Cultural Affairs Commissioner Marivell Caba shared a similar view, saying the funding board seemed like it would add unnecessary bureaucracy.

Mann and other USAC members said though the responsible use of student fees is important, many different offices and organizations need funding and should be able to access it without excessive restrictions or an overly complicated process.

General Representative Samer Araabi said though there is always the potential for abuse of funding from student fees, people should have faith in their fellow students who receive this money to use it responsibly and in the system of oversight in place.

He added that making the money readily available for projects and programming for the campus community is his priority and that this could be constrained by excessive oversight and control of the money.

“Overall, my concern is making sure the money is accessible. … The more you complicate the funding process will make it less accessible,” Araabi said.

Both Araabi and Community Service Commissioner Farheen Malik said when money ends up going to the operation of USAC, councilmembers need to be aware that this means the money is unavailable to student groups for programming that directly benefits students.

“USAC in itself has the power to take away money from student groups,” Araabi said of the power the council has to allocate funds to its own projects and operations.

Stephanie Cherng, a second-year English student, said she wasn’t sure how fairly USAC was distributing the money, and that it seemed quite easy for them to favor their own interests.

“For me, $3 million is a lot for a student group to handle. Everyone has their own loyalties, and I don’t know if I trust they would spend the money wisely to benefit the university as a whole instead of the specific groups they’re interested in,” she said.

In the breakdown of these administrative costs, Mann said roughly $345,048 ““ almost 70 percent of the administrative overhead budget ““ is essentially fixed and outside of USAC’s direct control, since $242,291 pays for the salaries of the accountants who oversee the budget, and $102,757 goes to maintenance and utilities in Kerckhoff Hall, where USAC and student organizations are housed.

Schuster said he believes the resources in Kerckhoff that come out of this administrative budget should benefit more student groups than they currently do.

“I understand that it costs a lot to run Kerckhoff … but if we’re going to be spending half of a million dollars to run Kerckhoff, it should be serving more than just 20 of the over 800 groups on campus,” he said, referring to the limited number of groups that receive office space in Kerckhoff.

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