ASUM Budget Finalized

After seventeen hours and one missed Modest Mouse concert, ASUM had a budget.

The senators and executive board of the student run organization determine the budgets of all ASUM approved student groups on campus. After dolling out the majority of $750,000 to their own needs, ASUM had about $36,000 left over for student groups.

New this year was a protocol for fund allocation, said ASUM President Andrea Helling.
Previously, groups were allocated funds in a random manner that allowed for favoritism, she said. This year, striving to improve equity, each group was given a proportional amount for basic office needs, and told to seek special events funding for such activities as concerts, performances and lectures.

As a result, many groups were allocated far less than they requested, while a few groups with zero-dollar requests received funding anyway.

But as with all things budgetary, you’ve got to dig to find the truth. Turns out, many groups received more funding this year than last - just less than they requested.

One such group is the Montana Anthropology Student Association. The group requested $10,303 from ASUM, and was allocated just $2,976. When contacted by the Kaimin, their response to the apparent “reduction” was gratitude.

“We really increased our funding over last year,” said group president Erika Scheuring. “Last year we received only $475, so what we were given this year is really considerate.” The amount they asked for included funds to pay off debts left from last year, Scheuring said. “We wanted to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

Any group unhappy with the executive board’s initial recommendations could petition the senate at a March 5th meeting, Helling said. All groups were given a written statement as to why any funding was denied, as well.

Still, not all groups were fortunate.

The literary magazine Cutbank suffered the greatest cut, said Helling, who doesn’t “feel too good about that. Cutbank is a legacy,” she said, but the group turned in their request almost a month late, and that hurt them. Last year, the journal received $13,815. This year, they got just $1000.

Due to what Helling characterized as an ‘oversight,’ Cutbank was not recognized as an official student group. Helling explained that all groups must go through an annual process of being recognized by ASUM before being allocated funds. “We were emailing them at an address they didn’t check,” she said.

To remedy the mistake, which Helling said was the fault of both the magazine and ASUM, Cutbank was “recognized as a student group during the budgetary process, and we gave them $1000.”

Establishing the budget for student groups takes commitment from both the groups and the senate, Helling emphasized. “We had some quorum issues,” she said. For some senators, “Modest Mouse took precedence over the senate.”

Typically conducted on a Saturday, this year’s budget meeting was rescheduled to Friday so as not to collide with St. Patty’s Day festivities. “We knew a lot of people would be drinking,” Helling remarked.

Still, the Friday night concert and student work schedules left ASUM in a bind. “Senator Lucas Hamilton gave up his Modest Mouse tickets to stay and meet quorum,” Helling said. “He’s just incredible.”

The problem may not repeat next year, though. “This was a young senate,” Helling said. “There were only a handful of people who had done budgeting before.” Only three of this year’s senators are graduating, though, so next year may see some institutional memory that streamlines the process, Helling said.