your Student Union Blog

A lot has happened since we last posted. The Student Union Budget for 2007-2008 was passed, we ended another school year, and we have begun our summer projects. I’ll (Neil) be writing over the summer because it’s something I love to do and I think an awesome way to keep in contact with those who want something fun to read.

So a general overview of the budget. This year, the SU budget got more coverage than I’ve seen at my time at Wash U. The change that caused the most talk was how we funded Executive Committees. Executive Committees are groups formed by past Executives outside of our normal student group process. Because of this, they usually have access to significant amounts of funds (given the Spring before their year begins) with very little oversight by SU.

This is interesting for two reasons. Executive Committees are officially part of the Executive Branch which is headed by the Student Union Executive. Therefore, Executive committees, must answer to Executive Officers. Any guidance, suggestion, or advice the Executives have must technically be implemented by Executive Committees (think the relationship between the President and his Cabinet).

However, this situation is ideal neither for us nor the Executive Committees. We do want a hand in their direction, but we do not want to micromanage them. We do want them to take our suggestions seriously, but we realize that they know what they’re doing best.

And so, we reached a solution. We wanted to hold them more accountable, cut of excess spending, and reestablish relationships with these Executive committees because at the end of the day, they are just as part of SU Executive as the President is. The 2007-2008 budget allocated $646,804.05 to Executive Committees ($110 per student). The groups that received the most money were Team 31 ($225K), Campus Programming Council ($97K), Sports Club Federation ($120K), Gargoyle ($31K), KWUR ($30K), WUTV ($26K).

And still, despite the fact that we allocated about $110 to these committees, there was significant backlash. To put it into context, SU’s other 230 Category I and Category II student groups for next year will be receiving $637K. That means a handful of Executive Committees were receiving more total than 230 student groups.

We wanted to strengthen our other 230 student groups (which include ABS, Ashoka, Dance Marathon, Relay for Life, CSA, JSU, CSU, etc - go to http://su.wustl.edu/general/groupresources/directory.php for the full list) and we did just that. All our student groups impact students’ lives and we wanted to make sure we gave them all the very best in resources.

We look forward to working with our Executive Committees to making sure that we are both doing the best possible things to reach out and affect each student.

Other interesting things in the budget: we created a Student Union Speaker Series with $40,000 to help us bring in big name speakers to campus next semester.

We created a Student Union advocacy fund with $22,000 so that SU can put money where its mouth is when it advocates for students. This money will go towards student initiatives that help the entire campus!

Here is a copy. Take a look. And remember to voice your input throughout the year on how this is and is not affecting you!

Student Union Budget 2007 - 2008