The students in charge of distributing incidental fees in a timely and viewpoint-neutral manner have made an appalling mess of the budget and now must find a way to recover the tens-of-thousands of dollars already promised to student groups.
Apparently nobody at the ASUO Programs Finance Committee bothered to keep track of the money they were dishing out — we are hardly surprised — and now the unthinkable has happened: They are scrambling to find a way out. Making matters worse, the PFC has wasted the entire month of February dealing with injunctions and launching inappropriate attacks on free speech, and now they have less than a week to submit and implement a solution.
Many suggestions were batted around during Friday’s brainstorming session, none of them ideal, many of them potentially destructive. One suggestion was to take 2 percent from every group’s budget, a problematic solution that could have left certain line items under-funded. Programs that deservingly received small increases should not have their budgets decreased just because the PFC gave generously to one of their pet projects.
The second suggestion was for the PFC to blindly sign off on all ASUO Executive recommendations. That PFC members would even contemplate shirking their responsibilities, after failing to do their jobs in a spectacular display of incompetence, is beyond comprehension. Why have a PFC if it is going to rubber-stamp the Executive recommendation? Why have months of hearings? Why even allow student programs to make a budget request if the PFC is simply going to “listen to the controllers,” as embattled Vice Chair Mason Quiroz suggested? The members of the PFC need to do their jobs once and for all and stop passing the buck.
The third suggestion — and the one accepted — was to rework the stipend model. If the PFC were to figure out a system, it could potentially fill the funding gap without sacrificing programing. Of the three imperfect solutions on the table, this is the one the PFC wisely chose to execute. If a group is unable to find energized volunteers and poorly paid leaders then maybe that is a group that doesn’t deserve student money in the first place.
The Emerald has additional suggestions. First, all PFC members should have their wages garnished as punishment for their criminal ineptitude. Second, they should issue a formal apology to every student group for wasting their time over the last several months. Third, they should issue a second formal apology to all University students for treating their money like it was a game of Monopoly. Fourth, they should hold a town hall-style public meeting so they can answer student questions and hear student criticism.
The Emerald has already called for an outside facilitator to conduct PFC meetings in the future in order to ensure that its members understand and follow rules on viewpoint neutrality. Perhaps another outside facilitator is needed to help PFC members count.

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