ASUO has controlled the incidental fee — a sum students pay when they enroll in courses that ASUO then allocates to a number of programs, primarily through its major finance committees — since 1970. Currently, the sum of this fee stands at roughly $17 million, with students paying $271.75 for each academic term of the 2020-21 school year. This year, ASUO’s surplus is abnormally high; even after paying off its deficit, it has $917,542 available for allocation as of the most recent senate meeting on Nov. 18.

Under the ASUO constitution, the senate has the power to ask University of Oregon students for a slightly larger per term I-fee than its program benchmarks require, provided that the I-fee does not increase by more than 5%. This extra money goes into the senate’s surplus, which ASUO can use to solve their deficit as well as provide student organizations with additional funding that was not allocated to them in the previous year.

In contrast, ASUO had roughly $525,000 available for allocation during the 2019-20 year, about $215,000 in 2018-19 and approximately $335,000 in 2017-18. 

Programs Finance Committee Vice Chair Asa Ward attributed the bump in money to COVID-19, as many I-fee-funded student organizations had to cancel or modify programming that they could not carry out over a virtual platform. During the 2019-20 fiscal year, programs returned just over $350,000 to ASUO — a figure roughly ten times greater than the year before and seven times more than returns in 2017-18.

“We appreciate them returning it, because — this is me speaking from PFC — that shows that they’re being fiscally responsible,” said senate treasurer and PFC member Ella Meloy.

Meloy and Ward predicted that ASUO will see a similar trend in returns at the end of the 2020-21 academic year due to the fact that ASUO allocates funding a fiscal year in advance. This means that money for the current year was distributed to programs during the 2019-20 year before the pandemic. With organizations either shifting to online engagement or cancelling their programs altogether, their costs are usually significantly cheaper, as food, transportation and potentially space rental costs become a non-issue. 

Ward said this year’s surplus puts both the senate and PFC in a more complicated place when it comes to allocating funds. “It’s this weird balancing act where you have to factor in what’s going on this year, but also apply it to what’s going to happen next year,” he said. 

UO Vice President Kevin Marbury projected that enrollment, and the resulting I-fee money, for the 2021-22 academic year will be similar to that of 2020-21. But Ward said it’s impossible to know for sure, since the impact of COVID-19 on the next academic year is not yet clear.

“We have to be fiscally responsible,” Ward said, “and prepare ourselves for the unknown because we don’t know what’s going to happen next year. We don’t know where things are going, what track we’re on, and it’s all dependent on so many different factors.”

Potentially lower enrollment, as UO has already seen this academic year, poses an issue in terms of deficit. The 2020-21 ASUO deficit is already just under four times greater than the year before — although the 2017-18 deficit was notably larger than this year’s. ASUO’s lack of funding is the result of it allocating more money than they actually have — again the result of budgeting a fiscal year in advance. Meloy said this is usually the result of there being fewer I-fee paying students than ASUO accounted for. 

Still, Ward and Meloy want to use the existing surplus to support student organizations, provided those groups have a plan. “If they have ways to spend their funding, we want them to come and use it,” Meloy said.
With the unknowns of COVID-19, she and Ward emphasize the importance of groups that are coming to surplus having a concrete outline as to how they will spend the money they are requesting. “Even though it’s a big amount of money, we can’t just give it out to anyone and everyone for whatever purpose they serve,” Meloy said. “It’s our responsibility to make sure that — because everyone pays into it — it needs to be going to the right places and actually being used.”

Beyond funding organizations, Meloy said the senate wants to use I-fee money to support students directly. “We want to use the money in the most equitable way,” she said, “and make sure that we’re really addressing on-campus needs.”

Senate ombudsperson Irisa Mehta said these plans are still in the works. While ASUO doesn’t have many pre-existing programs in place to build off of, Mehta is optimistic about how a number of the voices that have been most active in discussions about surplus use aren’t seniors, because that opens the possibility of a multi-year plan. 

“It is a lot of work,” she said, “because previous student body governments haven’t really done much. It’s on us to really get something done.”

One of the things the senate is considering is a program that would allow ASUO to channel the money student groups return from their food line items into food security efforts, Meloy said. This would potentially be in collaboration with ASUO’s executive branch, which created its own line item for a food security budget at their weekly senate meeting on Nov. 11, but has yet to request funds for specific initiatives.

Meloy also pointed to the senate’s Black Lives Matter committee, which wants to fund Black student groups on campus. ASUO President Isaiah Boyd also proposed using I-fee money on an educational series about white supremacy, hate speech, first amendment rights and maintaining activism.

“I don’t like looking at the surplus like it’s a free bank that we can go to, but I think in this case having all the funds that we have in surplus will allow us to really find someone that students can be energized to go and see,” he said, alluding to bringing people like Angela Davis to speak.

As the senate’s primary purpose is to allocate and appropriate the I-fee, Meloy said the question of how to best use ASUO’s surplus will take center stage during the winter and spring terms. Mostly, she said she wants to “make sure that the fees that students have paid for goes directly and helps them in the most beneficial way, and everyone’s needs are met on campus.”