The Associated Students of Linfield College budget increased 1 percent for the 2010-11 academic year; however, despite the overall increase, all but three segments were dealt budget cuts.
The ASLC Senate approved the budget unanimously with almost no discussion May 17, although the spreadsheet distributed to Senate was not the final version and edits were still necessary.
Of the 22 groups that receive funds from the ASLC, only the Club Director, Student Center and Linfield Activities Board received increased resources within the overall ASLC budget of $350,000.
Freshman Club Director Keevin Craig’s funding jumped from $619 to $1,423 — a skyrocketing 130 percent increase. Junior ASLC Vice President of Business and Finance Arielle Perkins said the extra money will pay for food at the fall’s Activities Fair.
In the past, the school has provided a barbecue at the event, but ASLC President Colin Jones, former club director, said the event did not take place this past year.
“I think [not having food] reduced attendance at the activities fair,” he said, adding that it especially decreased incentives for upperclassmen to attend.
The school cut the barbecue because it cost Sodexho more than $5,000 to pay for the event, Jones said. It will be a less expensive to get food from a different venue, which is what the Club Director’s budget increase will go toward.
The budget for Student Center Director junior Evan Hilberg increased 8 percent from last year, and the $18,988.80 he received is actually $446.80 more than he requested from the Budget Hearing Committee — comprised up of Jones, Perkins and Director of Student Activites Dan Fergueson.
His was the only position to receive an increase from the requested funding and his budget went up despite having cut Gameroom and CIC hours for the fall (“ASLC cuts operating hours of Gameroom, CIC,” TLR, May 7). But hours cut from those locations were redistributed to the Bike Co-Op, Perkins said. The budget increase was necessary to pay for work study positions there, as Perkins said there wasn’t enough money to pay those employees this year.
The final budget swell,
given to LAB, went to Wildstock and popular LAB events, Perkins said. Its budget increased $31,857.63 from last year for a total of $142,087.94. Part of the increase came from ASLC budgeting in the cost of a stage for Wildstock, which LAB usually gets from Activities Council (whose budget went down because of this allocation of funds). ALSC also gave money for different bands, Perkins said.
“We also gave them a little more money for the band for Wildstock just so they can have someone that people are interested in,” she said. “We want the student body fees to go to something they will enjoy.”
Every other group that receives money from ASLC took a cut, including all clubs for the second year in a row.
In the 2008-09 academic year, clubs received $100 each, but that number was reduced to $85 this year because of lack of use (“ASLC reduces club budgets by 15 percent,” TLR, September 18, 2009).
Now, they’re down to $50 per club.
“[Clubs] wait until the end of the year and then just ask for their remaining funds, which we want to discourage because what are they doing in the last couple of weeks? There’s not much you can do,” Perkins said. “We just don’t want to give them money if they’re not going to use it for things their clubs needs.”
She said that if clubs want to put on events, then they should plan ahead and request funding from the Activities Council.
The Budget Hearing Committee cut all the club budgets on its own, but other groups present proposed budgets to the committee.
This year, it had to cut $80,000 from the proposed budgets to reach to the $350,000 figure, which comes from an estimate of next year’s student body fees, Perkins said.
“We give them the money that we think that they absolutely need,” she said. “We tried to do it in a way that we didn’t take a bunch of money from one certain area, like club sports, but we tried to take it from different areas.”
But club sports — lacrosse, Linfield Ultimate Players Association, water polo and rugby and tennis clubs — suffered significant cuts. Rugby Club and lacrosse, which each requested about $10,000, were given budgets of $5,080 and $3,607.50, respectively.
These budgets are still 30 percent (lacrosse) and 36 percent (rugby) down from the sports’ budgets last year. Part of the decrease stemmed from an automatic 10 percent cut on each of their budgets because Rugby Club turned in its budgeting information late and lacrosse failed to show up for its budget hearing, Perkins said.
And, as of the May 17 Senate meeting, both lacrosse and rugby, among other clubs, were on ASLC’s decharter list for not turning in end-of-the-semester club evaluations.
Although it appears like more than $4,000 would seemingly disappear if these clubs were to be dechartered, this is not the case.
“The money rolls into Activities Council so the money is still available to other clubs,” Perkins said.
An $8,000 budget for athletic training was completely eliminated, too.
“I think that athletic training had asked ASLC to give a portion of their money toward them historically. But I guess they thought that it was cut a long time ago from our budget, and it was just miscommunication,” Perkins said. “This year we finally got it straightened out.”
Kelley Hungerford
Editor-in-chief Kelley Hungerford can be reached at [email protected]