At least two Downtown campus student organizations have complaints about waiting to receive funds granted to them by ASASUD, citing a lack of communication after funding requests were approved.
Matt Culbertson, president of ASU’s chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America, said the process was “needlessly frustrating” after waiting over 12 weeks to get his group’s money from the time the funding request was made.
The ASU chapter of PRSSA requested $4,500 to send 12 members to the society’s national conference in Washington, D.C., at $375 each; $295 for registration and $80 for travel expenses.
After ASASUD approved the funding request Sept. 10, Culbertson said ASASUD Business Operations Manager Ricardo Vital told him Oct. 7 that the checks would be mailed by Oct. 20.
Vital said that had been an estimate of when ASU could pay the group and that the process was out of his hands by that time.
“They think I’m sitting here waiting to give them a check,” said Vital, adding that he is not solely in charge of finalizing transactions.
After following up with Vital, Culbertson said he was told there had been a delay because PRSSA had not received funding from ASASUD before, so the members needed to be entered into the system.
Culbertson continued to ask about the funding for almost a month and said he was told multiple times that the checks were in the mail, when they actually were not.
“One of the most frustrating things in the world is not getting paid when you’re supposed to,” Culbertson said. “You have to wonder whether you’re going to get the money. We have a lot of members who hopefully aren’t just out of luck on $375.”
Vital said the checks were in his office Nov. 18 and asked if Culbertson would like to have the checks mailed. Culbertson agreed to have them mailed, but one PRSSA member opted to pick up her check at Vital’s office. She found that the check only covered the $295 registration fee.
Vital said he wasn’t sure why the wrong amount was sent out and that by that point it was no longer his responsibility.
The other PRSSA members are still waiting for their checks, expecting to only receive $295.
Vital said the biggest problem was that the members had not been entered into the school’s system, and that he wasn’t the person who is responsible for taking care of that.
ASASUD President Christian Vasquez echoed that at the Nov. 19 ASASUD Senate meeting, but Sen. Dustin Volz, a junior representing Barrett, the Honors College, said Culbertson had been told the checks were in the mail when they were not.
There was a communication problem somewhere, Volz said.
Journalism sophomore Anne Stegen, vice president of ASU’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, had a similar problem dealing with miscommunication between ASASUD and Vital and with the “red tape” involved in the funding request process.
“I think there’s just a bunch of ‘gotchas’ in the rules that are really frustrating,” Stegen said.
After tabling their funding request on Sept. 10, ASASUD approved SPJ for $4,000 on Sept. 17 for 12 members to attend SPJ’s national conference in Las Vegas.
By Sept. 22, the late deadline for registration, Stegen had not received any money from ASASUD. She worked out a deal with conference organizers that allowed her to pay the cheaper registration price of $185 per person after the deadline had passed.
Stegen said an ASASUD senator advised her to speak with Vital but she could not schedule an appointment with him until Oct. 1, the day before she left for the conference.
Stegen said she waited for an hour but Vital did not show up to the meeting that day. Vital said he doesn’t remember why he missed the meeting and said he might have been sick.
The same day, Stegen met with Georgeana Montoya, dean for student affairs. Montoya called Vital, who said nobody told him SPJ’s funding request had been approved.
Montoya helped SPJ pay for registration and offered to reimburse Stegen for the car she rented for around $300. However, Montoya told Stegen students could not be given money for hotel rooms before a trip.
Hoping ASASUD would reimburse her, Stegen used more than $1,700 of her own money on three hotel rooms for 12 members. Stegen also said she hoped ASASUD would reimburse her for the gas for two other cars the group had used to get to Las Vegas.
“I didn’t have much left after that,” she said. “I was in a tight spot.”
Stegen got back from the trip the next week and e-mailed Vital again Oct. 6. She was able to meet with him and give him her receipts, and Vital said he would try to process the request to reimburse Stegen for travel and hotel costs by Oct. 8, a Friday.
Then Vital went on a vacation, Stegen said, and didn’t put in the request for about another week and a half.
After Vital did put in the request, Stegen was told one person could not be reimbursed for multiple hotel rooms and that even though she had paid for other people’s rooms she could only be reimbursed for one.
Stegen asked two other participants to request $550 each from ASASUD. Of that $1,100, SPJ would receive $896, which the organization had lent to Stegen, and Stegen would receive the remaining $204.
On Nov. 15, ASASUD reimbursed Stegen $893.70 for one hotel room and the car she rented.
If both $550 funding requests are approved, Stegen and SPJ will be reimbursed a total of $1,993.70 of the $2,051.78 they spent.
Over eight weeks after Stegen paid for the hotel and rental car, she is $262.08 in the red and SPJ is still waiting for $896.
“It was difficult to work with ASASUD in some aspects, and also more so difficult to work with Ricky Vital,” Stegen said.
Stegen said she asked Vital to put in another reimbursement request for the gas money the other two students had spent but she isn’t sure if it has happened yet.
Stegen said she thought she would receive a check for the $4,000 the senate had approved, and she would give back whatever money she didn’t use.
“There’s a lot of red tape in the process and it’s been really frustrating working with the system,” Stegen said. “As a student, I don’t have a thousand dollars to throw around. After I found out I would have to pay for it out of pocket, I had really hoped they would have worked a lot harder to get me my money back in a more reasonable time period.”
Stegen met with ASASUD President Christian Vasquez and Director of Finance Cameron Polom after getting back from the conference. She said they sorted out some of the things that went wrong and thought of ways to improve the process. Stegen said Polom told her he had only been communicating with SPJ President Mallory Kydd when he should have also been communicating with her.
ASASUD Vice President Jessica Abercrombie said it is Polom and Vasquez’s responsibility to communicate with Vital and that they had both met with him several times to help speed up the process.
Abercrombie said as a young organization, ASASUD still has work to do on how funding requests are processed.
Stegen said her main worry is not whether she will be reimbursed, but rather not knowing when it will happen.
“I am confident that I will eventually get my money and that the club will eventually get its money back,” she said. “The most frustrating part is waiting through all the red tape.”
Contact the reporter at john.l.fitzpatrick@asu.edu
