When students begin classes on Jan. 8, there will be another important beginning within the walls of the EMU: The ASUO Student Senate will begin dividing the incidental fee among several EMU programs, student tickets and more than 100 ASUO programs.
The three budget committees — the EMU Board, the Athletic Department Finance Committee and the Programs Finance Committee — will decide how much money the groups will receive for their 2001-2002 budgets.
The money comes from the incidental fee, which University students pay each term.
With about $2.3 million on the line, the PFC will waste no time. Hearings begin the first Monday of winter term and will continue throughout January three times each week from 5 p.m. until as late as it takes.
During the hearings, representatives from programs ranging from the ASUO Constitution Court to Dance Oregon — two of the first groups that will present their budgets Jan. 8 — will explain what their groups do and why they want to increase or decrease their budgets for next year.
The five-person committee will examine how much each group spent this year, as well as how much money wasn’t used and thus placed in the general surplus. It will also look at any fundraising efforts the program conducted.
The PFC will then deliberate and a majority vote will decide how much money the group will get.
“If groups don’t like what they get, there is an appeals process,” said Sen. Mary Elizabeth Madden, chair of the Programs Finance Committee.
While it does not handle as large a volume of programs as the PFC, the EMU Board also has its work cut out for it come January, Sen. Skye Tenney said. The board budgets money from the incidental fee to 13 groups, including the cultural forum and EMU facilities.
Tenney, the budget chair for the board, said it will divide a limited amount of funds among several programs that want more money.
Last week, the Senate approved 6.4 percent increase in the EMU’s budget for next year.
“All the programs have requests for money,” she said. “But we obviously don’t have a lot of money to hand out because 5.7 percent [of the increase] is going to maintain current service level” of the EMU.
For the ADFC, there will be less dividing of funds and more dealing with the athletic department. The ADFC and the athletic department will spend January negotiating the amount of student incidental fee money that will pay for student tickets to football and men’s basketball games, Sen. Jennifer Greenough said.
In February, the ADFC will present its budget to the Senate along with the other two committees. Afterward, the Senate will either approve or deny each request.
Whichever budgets the Senate approves will then go to ASUO President Jay Breslow. Upon Breslow’s approval, the budgets will be placed in front of University President Dave Frohnmayer. The last step takes the budgets all the way to the Oregon University System for final approval.
If the Senate does not approve the budgets, Madden said, they generally make specific recommendations to change them. The committees will make the relevant changes and return with their revised budgets the next week.
“There are many competing interests, and it is impossible to please everyone — especially while trying to maintain a level of fiscal responsibility,” Greenough said about the budget process. It “is long and arduous, but having some student control over incidental fees is worth the time and effort.”