Student leaders from the new Undergraduate Student Government administration plan to use more money collected from student fees to fund student activities.
USG President Brendan O’Kelly said he hopes to use the funding to help promote community on campus, which means bigger expenditures on events like the ASU Welcome Week concert held Friday night. The final cost of the concert has not yet been tallied, but O’Kelly said he expects it to be around about $100,000, most of which came from a surplus from last year.
“I think it would be great for students to come here and see that ASU does things like this,” O’Kelly said. “The University is putting a big emphasis on involvement [this year].”
O’Kelly said the allocations will not be finalized until a meeting of the USG Senate on Sept. 1, but he hopes to use more student funding toward boosting campus involvement.
This year’s budget also includes decreased allocations to the University’s Safety Escort Service, which received a $179,000 reduction, while the Health and Wellness department’s budget was reduced by $30,000.
Much of the funding for the Safety Escort Program, he said, was used last year to buy new vans and hire new staff, while the cuts to Health and Wellness were in response to a series of educational fairs and seminars students showed little interest in.
“We had a surplus [in health and wellness funding] last year and we didn’t want that to happen again,” O’Kelly said. “If we are using student money, we want to make sure they are benefiting from it.”
One beneficiary of the administration is the Residence Hall Association, which puts on a Hawaiian-themed welcome party called the Tiki Luau at the beginning of every school year. This year, the USG Senate Appropriations Committee contributed $13,000 to the event, which is usually funded by leftover money from RHA’s budget and sponsors.
RHA spokesperson Brittany Greer said the funding is a long-term investment for RHA because it helps get many students interested in involvement with the campus community.
“It’s not easy to get college students interested, and we feel that the bigger the event, the more likely it is to attract students,” Greer said. “And many of those students become involved in USG and RHA.”
USG also contributed an additional $75,000 this year to the Programming and Activities Board to put on various events, such as comedy shows, and increased its funding to the Sports Club Association by about $70,000, a one-time allocation that would be used to buy new equipment. About $50,000 will go toward promoting intercollegiate athletics, an expense not seen on the previous year’s budget, O’Kelly said.
PAB President Kate Vawter said the University has historically had a small budget for student activity programming in years past. The increase in funding will allow it to put on more large-scale events, such as Friday’s Welcome Week concert, she said.
“Until the introduction of the student fee last year, PAB’s budget was considerably smaller than programming boards of similar universities,” Vawter said in an e-mail. “Because of the student fee we are able to provide students with large scale professional events for next to no cost to them.”
O’Kelly added that USG is responding to requests he frequently heard from students last semester during his presidential campaign.
“[The new administration] didn’t come in and say, ‘here’s what we want to do,” O’Kelly said. “When we talked to students on the campaign, we tried to learn what they wanted.”
Among the most notable examples of this is what O’Kelly called “a substantial increase” in funding toward involvement in advocacy for higher education. He said the increase is a direct response to student involvement in demonstrations last semester protesting state cuts to University funding.
English literature senior Ben Henderson, who sits on the board of directors for the Arizona Students’ Association, a student advocacy group, said he was pleased to see USG increasing its level of involvement in promoting affordable higher education at the Capitol.
“We’re very excited about USG’s commitment to our cause,” Henderson said. “Higher education is one of those things that benefits everyone.
It’s a business-booster and it helps promote a well-informed and competent society.”
O’Kelly said he also hopes to create a new USG Web site that would allow students to see how their money is being spent by student government.
The costs of putting up and maintaining the site have not yet been finalized.
Representatives of the Health and Wellness Center declined to comment.
Reach the reporter at derek.quizon@asu.edu.
