Every year, the ASUO accumulates surplus funds from the incidental fee after underestimating the amount of students enrolled in the University. The extra money is put into the over-realized fund, and is then distributed to student groups that make one-time monetary requests. For instance, $65,000 of the $200,000 in the fund for the 2010-11 school year was earmarked for a concert planned by the Jewish Student Union that will take place at the end of the Spring ASUO Street Faire.
The problem with the over-realized fund is that student groups depend on its money as a source of surplus income, but the money itself is technically a variable, because the ASUO sets the next year’s incidental fee based on estimations of the next year’s enrollment, instead of on a finite number. Because the ASUO has used conservative estimates recently in an effort to prevent a shortfall of funds, the incidental fee has ended up being higher than necessary.
The over-realized fund has generally been used for special requests such as the one by the Jewish Student Union, with the notable exception of the Sam Dotters-Katz administration in the 2008-09 school year. Dotters-Katz returned $100 to each student in spring 2009 after determining money from the over-realized fund served students best in their own pockets.
The Over-Realized Fund Committee should be commended for its structure in tackling these special requests, which is an improvement over how it worked in years past. This year, requests are being vetted by the committee first, before being voted upon by the full ASUO Senate. In the past, groups filled out the same special request forms required for surplus requests, but specified that money should come from the over-realized fund.
Ideally, there would be a way for the ASUO to make more accurate predictions of enrollment and the setting of the incidental fee to make it so that the over-realized fund would be a small amount that would roll over into the unallocated reserves fund, a rainy day fund for when predictions overestimate enrollment. This would be in place of how it currently works, where the large amount of reserves are accessible by all student groups.
However, because the ASUO does have this money to spend, spending it on groups on a case-by-case basis is the best way to deal with the over-realized fund because it benefits the campus community more than giving students back their individual portion of the over-realized fund (which this year would total less than the $100 it was in the 2008-09 school year).
Because these special one-time requests can do unique, valuable things for the University community, if the ASUO has the extra money, it should continue to put money toward campus-centric ideas.
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