The Student Initiated Outreach Committee will face a cut of a
third of its funding next year because of statewide budget
cuts.
Now the SIOC worries that Chancellor Albert Carnesale will use
state cuts to justify cutting the University of California Office
of the President’s contribution to the committee, leaving the
organization with less than 50 percent of its current budget, said
SIOC chairwoman Leilani Downing.
The group of seven student organizations that do mentoring,
tutoring and outreach for minorities at high schools and community
colleges throughout Los Angeles say such cuts would destroy their
organization.
Downing said this projected cut will leave the SIOC unable to
function next year as it has this year.
“Right now we’re working at capacity with our
budget,” Downing said.
Downing said the SIOC currently only covers the cost of
transportation, field trips, tutoring resources and basic
administrative costs.
A state budget cut would force SIOC to scale back programs, she
said, though none would be eliminated.
If the chancellor decides to revoke funding, Downing said the
compounded effect would leave the SIOC unable to function at
all.
Such a decision would also violate a contracted agreement
Carnesale signed in 1999 to match the portion of student fees that
go toward SIOC with university funds, she said.
“Our contract with the university had nothing to do with
the (state) budget,” she said.
Without outreach, UCLA’s relationships with high school
students and the community could be severely weakened, harming the
campus’ image.
“We serve more than 2,000 students on a weekly basis. The
fact that we have all this on a small-sized budget actually
benefits the school,” she said. “The cut would just
decimate us.”
Max Benavidez, senior counsel for the office of media relations,
said the chancellor’s office is looking into the matter.
Though the SIOC has not directly communicated with Carnesale or
received any final information about cuts, students in SIOC are
already anticipating the cuts.
Reem Salahi, assistant director of the Muslim Student
Association’s Mentors for Academic and Peer Support, said the
projected budget cuts will force the group to do difficult
reorganizing.
The group is currently seeking outside funding through grants,
but Salahi said she is disappointed that the group must resort to
to additional sources.
“This definitely speaks to the fact that the university is
more of a corporate entity (seeing as) the first things to get cut
are outreach and student services, while services that will bring
in money such as department research come in first,” she
said.
Georgie Noguera, director of MEChA’s XINACHTLI mentoring
program, said the budget cuts will create extreme chaos in all the
projects, problems which she thinks the university should
mitigate.
“UCLA has a reputation of community outreach. We want to
make sure they are held accountable for that. The university should
be paying for these programs,” she said.
“It would be such a blow to what we have been doing over
the years,” she said.
Noguera said if the school lowers funding, the SIOC plans to
mobilize the UCLA community to take action against the cuts.