UF’s Student Senate initially OK’d the 2014-2015 Activity and Service Fee Budget on Tuesday — and it’s about $1.2 million less than this year’s.
The new budget totals $17,798,535. A reduction of that size hasn’t occurred in more than 20 years, budget and appropriations chairman Joseph Michaels said at the meeting.
The university did not ask for an increase in the student fee rate, which is $17.35 a credit hour. At the same time, Michaels said, there’s an anticipated decrease in the total amount of credit hours students will take — meaning less money.
“We wanted to make sure we were putting the funding towards projects that would allow us to give students [things] that they would not have access to anywhere else in the nation,” he said.
For example, proposed cuts for RecSports included reducing gym hours and group fitness classes. But those were rejected, Michaels said, because they’re too important to students.
“We’re confident that this budget is going to serve the students,” he said.
Changes include Accent Speakers Bureau receiving about $34,000 less for its programs. Student Government Productions will get about $43,000 less. The newspaper readership program was eliminated.
Academic organizations will also receive about $75,000 less than in the 2013-2014 budget, but student organizations will see no change in funding.
“I really kind of see a problem in that student organizations have double the budget that the academic orgs do,” District D Senator Olga Rodriguez said. “We’re a flagship university, and we need to be providing the same amount of support to academic orgs.”
College of Medicine Senator Jacob Burns said he thought academic organizations were using most of their money for travel. He said enabling travel is great but should not be “heavily budgeted for.”
One of the few gains in the budget was a roughly $53,000 increase in the salaries of Student Government staff members. This is due in part to a state government mandate but also the addition of a marketing director position.
This, along with other changes, concerned District D Senator Daniella Saetta.
“[The budget] seems a lot like it’s very administratively-centric. It’s not student-centric,” she said. “We have cheaper options for a lot of these things.”
Senators will vote again on the budget at next week’s Senate meeting, which is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom (Holland Hall, Room 180).
Contact Julia Glum at jglum@alligator.org.
