At the adjournment of Tuesday night’s student government meeting, External Vice President Maryssa Hall struck a note of caution, saying she was leaving the session with a “heavy heart.” Other councilmembers were similarly apprehensive.
Their uneasiness was not misplaced.
At the meeting, the Undergraduate Students Association Council voted to fund several councilmember initiatives with about $73,500 from $152,000 of available surplus funds, or money that rolls over from last year’s Associated Students UCLA budget.
The council faced a tough decision: allocate money from the surplus to their own initiatives, or let that money be funneled back into student group programming funds?
The initiatives that were funded on Tuesday night are all worthwhile in their own ways. However, many of the councilmembers asking for funds failed to provide real, sustainable funding sources for their projects in future years.
Councilmembers need to make a real effort to find alternative sources of funding for their programs. The discussion on Tuesday night should have been less about the worthiness of the programs councilmembers wanted to fund and more about how to secure the futures of those programs without relying on surplus funds.
After councilmembers are finished making surplus requests, the leftover money gets distributed to student programming funds according to a formula in the bylaws. And because money can only be spent once, more cash for councilmembers’ projects means less for student groups.
Given this reality, the council needs to make sure it does not continue to spend large sums of surplus on the same programs year after year.
Some councilmembers have been doing what they can to bring the costs of their programs down and stop depending so heavily on surplus. Cultural Affairs Commissioner Jessica Trumble, for example, suggested that if her event, UCLA’s JazzReggae Festival, began running a profit in ticket sales, it could stop relying on surplus all together.
Similarly, Internal Vice President Avi Oved and Student Wellness Commissioner Savannah Badalich’s proposal for a UCLA-specific safety app requested a sizeable one-time sum from the surplus, but the project will not be dependent on surplus at all in future years. According to Badalich, the $2,500 yearly maintenance fee for the application will be absorbed by the Student Wellness Commission’s budget.
These two presentations showed at least an effort to begin separating their funding from surplus. But the other initiatives seemingly had no solid plan for the future.
The External Vice President’s office asked for about $14,000 to renew UCLA’s membership with the United States Student Association, but did not outline a solid plan to fund that program in future years without surplus. Similarly, the Campus Events Commission’s request for funding for the Jack Benny and Spencer Tracy Awards did not include provisions for how the event could be self-reliant or contained within the office next year.
Last quarter, when a shortfall prompted council to cut allocations from the Student Organization Operational Fund, student groups took notice. Now that a large chunk has been taken out of surplus for councilmember projects, groups will once again see their funding cut, and a backlash is sure to follow.
When that backlash comes, the council should respond by demonstrating it won’t have to draw similarly large sums from surplus next year.
After Hall expressed her apprehension, Badalich worried aloud that her programs would peter out next year when she’s no longer in office. If she and the other councilmembers want to prevent their initiatives from folding as soon as they leave office, a good first step is to make sure the funding for their programs is sustainable and secure.