A massive student fee overestimation by the ASU administration has forced each campus government to expect less available money to allocate to student organizations this semester.
The administration estimates Downtown student government will be getting about $19,000 less and the Tempe student government will be receiving approximately $138,000 less.
The West and Polytechnic campus governments are expected to lose about $18,000 and $16,000, respectively.
The spring semester began with USGD having a little more than $47,000 to allocate to student organizations. Now that nearly half of that money will probably not come in, government members have begun to worry about not having enough money for every student organization that requests funds.
The money student governments allocate to organizations comes from the student programs fee of $25 per semester for full-time students and $12 per semester for part-time students.
The amount of money gathered from that fee is directly dependent on how many students are attending ASU and taking classes on campus. The fewer students who attend, the less money student governments get.
But, even with attendance rising after last year, other factors could impact how much money the student programs fee brings in, said James Rund, senior vice president of Educational Outreach and Student Services. Those factors include how many students are taking only online classes and how many students graduated at the end of the fall semester.
In fall 2010, the student programs fee brought in $1,510,025 and fell by $114,582 between the fall and spring semesters – a 7.6 percent drop.
The programs fee raised $1,494,781 last semester and almost certainly lost more between semesters.
Rund and his office discovered there could be a shortfall and alerted campus presidents on Jan. 20.
“I just didn’t want them making commitments if the budget is going to look more conservative,” Rund said.
USG President Jacob Goulding said the ASU administration is “dumbfounded” as to how such an egregious oversight could occur and is looking into it.
Even with $138,000 not expected to come in, Goulding said he doesn’t believe this will cause problems for Tempe student government or student organizations on his campus.
“We’ve been really good about managing our budget this year,” Goulding said. “I don’t see any major impact coming out of it.”
Downtown, those expected cuts immediately had an impact at a Senate meeting, with senators second-guessing the Budget Allocations Committee’s funding recommendations.
The Asian American Journalists Association, for example, received $900 less than the BAC recommended, and the BAC had already suggested cutting more than $4,000.
At the meeting, Senate Leader Zack Lindsay said student organizations should be upset with the drop in funding.
He found out about the loss only about 15 minutes before the Senate meeting began.
“There is nothing you can do about students not enrolling and not paying their fees, but a little heads-up would have been nice,” Lindsay said.
After the Jan. 20 Senate meeting, factoring in the expected loss in fee money from the administration, the Downtown student government will only have about $20,000 for the rest of the year to allocate to student organizations, said USGD Director of Finance Sam Tongue.
Even before the spring semester started this year, Tongue realized it would be difficult for USGD to make it to the end of the year with any money left over.
Tongue said he will be getting in contact in the next several weeks with student organizations who have already been allocated money to see how much of their funds have been used.
If an organization’s event costs less than they first estimated, Tongue said he would ask for the extra money to be put back in the government’s hands for reallocation.
“We need to squeeze every penny that we have so student organizations can have a shot at it,” Tongue said.
Contact the reporter at connor.radnovich@asu.edu
