[92] in UA Senate
Re: UA budgeting principles
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Paul Youchak)
Wed Oct 14 23:11:56 2009
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:07:36 -0400
From: Paul Youchak <youchakp@MIT.EDU>
To: Catherine Olsson <catherio@mit.edu>
CC: Andrew Lukmann <lukymann@mit.edu>, Alex Schwendner <alexrs@mit.edu>,
"Alex Dehnert (UA Treasurer)" <ua-treasurer@mit.edu>,
ua-senate@mit.edu, ua-discuss@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <4AD688AE.3060505@mit.edu>
A few comments:
A quick calculation for this years budget makes the cost spent on food
for meetings for various committees (and poland spring water) to be 5675
dollars which is 14% of our budget. This seems to be a pretty large sum
and percentage. Saving this money and giving it to Finboard would be
quite significant.
I understand the logic in moving the Senate elections to the fall so
that Freshmen could participate. This being said, I think it would be
worth considering revising this and moving the elections back to the
Spring. We could withhold a few open Freshman seats to be run with the
class council (independent of living group) allowing for their inclusion
in the fall as well. This process should allow Senators for the coming
year to be involved in the budgeting process and any other events which
might be taking place. For instance this would have allowed for the
Senators to help the Exec on the task force report this year and get
involved in other projects as soon as the school year begin. Returning
senators would also feel a greater obligation to be involved instead of
waiting for the fall session to start.
I, being a new Senator this year, do feel that I have relatively no idea
what is going on for these discussion and because of it do not feel it
is my place to question the judgment of those who know much more about
the topic than I.
back to work,
Paul
Catherine Olsson wrote:
> I strongly agree with Alex S's sentiments that we should favor putting
> money towards student groups instead of our own initiatives. I think
> at the very least, as Andrew brought up, we should hold ourselves to
> the same standard as Finboard holds student groups (which will be
> easier if Finboard's standards become more clearly stated and
> publicized as recommended by the FPRC). If we don't hold ourselves to
> the same standards as the groups we're withholding money from, then it
> seems clear to me that the money is not going to its best use.*
>
> Thanks, Andrew, for the relevant history. Would it make sense for us
> to extend the period of the summer budget through the second meeting
> of the subsequent fall's Senate session? It seems like this would
> prevent money from being spent before the fall budget is approved, as
> happened with Athletics Weekend and other expenditures this cycle.
>
> I would also be in favor of putting a collection jar out at Senate,
> Exec, and committee meetings so that we can pay for some of our own
> food. I greatly appreciate having food at Senate meetings, as it means
> I don't need to worry about finding dinner on an evening which is
> already very busy. However, paying a few bucks for the food I eat so
> that we aren't entirely taxing the student body for meals most of them
> don't eat (even though they're welcome to) seems very reasonable.
> Other students who come to meetings would still be able to eat the
> food and would be encouraged to chip in, too. Does anyone else agree?
>
> I'm very glad we're discussing this issue. Given that next term's
> budgeting is starting soon, I think now is exactly the right time to
> pull our thoughts together.
>
> - Catherine Olsson, Random Hall Senator and Senate Representative to
> Finboard
>
>
> *It should be noted that much of the funding denied to student groups
> by Finboard is because the groups' proposals seem not well-planned-out
> or not worth the money (such as t-shirts), not _because_ Finboard
> doesn't have enough money. But if Finboard had more money, we could
> relax some of our guidelines, enabling us to fund more conferences,
> fund capital such as costumes and musical instruments more than our
> current caps, fund more travel, enable groups that maintain a library
> (such as MITSFS and Anime Club) to acquire more new material, and
> allow groups who wish to hold a vast number of events to hold all
> their events and not just some.
>
>
> Andrew Lukmann wrote:
>> If Alex's sentiments are shared by a number of other new senators...
>> it might be time to re-investigate the timing of future budget
>> approvals as well.
>>
>> History:
>> In the somewhat distant past (6-7+ years ago) Senate was elected in
>> the Spring with the incoming UA P/VP. As a result, the incoming
>> Senate and the incoming administration worked together to compile and
>> approve a budget before the Summer. However, with a number of changes
>> to the living group constituencies, most importantly Freshmen on
>> Campus, the decision was made to move Senate elections to the Fall to
>> allow freshmen to vote (and run in) the Senate contest. From what I
>> recall, the first year of this change, the Fall budget was actually
>> voted upon by the outgoing Senate, allowing the administration to
>> have a complete and approved budget to operate on over the summer,
>> during orientation and during the Fall term. This, however, served to
>> largely hamstring the newly-elected Senate regarding financial policy
>> until at least the Spring budget was discussed in December. As a
>> result, this was altered (about 5 years ago) to the current
>> arrangement where the outgoing Senate (in the spring) grants an
>> advance for the administration to utilize over the Summer/Orientation
>> which is disbursed by the ExecComm in lieu of Senate. Then the Fall
>> budget is taken up and approved by the new Senate when it is finally
>> assembled and called to order by early-mid October.
>>
>> Problems:
>> It seems that in an effort to address problems of the past, we in
>> past UA administrations (and past sessions of Senate) have helped to
>> create new problems. It seems that even though the intent of moving
>> Fall budget approval to the Fall was to empower new Senators, this
>> has been less than effective. New senators are just beginning to find
>> their way and are reticent to question the wisdom of a budget handed
>> to them by more experienced officers like the President, Treasurer
>> and (often) Speaker. Situations are also encountered where the
>> executive assumes that certain budgetary line items will be approved
>> and preemptively spends the money (such as Athletics Weekend),
>> effectively circumventing Senate's oversight responsibility. Not
>> having an approved budget until mid October also hampers the ability
>> of the Executive and it's Committees to engage in activities and
>> programming early in the term.
>>
>> If other people in the UA agree that this is an important enough
>> issue, I encourage you to re-investigate the possibility of making
>> changes in the budget calendar and taking a closer look at the pros
>> and cons of different options. In the end, the balance will almost
>> always be between empowering the current (or most recently) elected
>> representatives and having an experienced enough group of Senators
>> calling the shots that they can serve as a meaningful check against
>> executive overreaching or "mission creep."
>>
>> Yours in the UA,
>> Andrew L.
>>
>>
>> Alex Schwendner wrote:
>>> I would like to advocate that our budgeting goal should be to allocate
>>> more money to student groups. Here's why:
>>>
>>> Our goal, as the Undergraduate Association, is to make things better
>>> for undergraduates. When it comes to money, this means that we should
>>> see that money gets spent on the things which most benefit MIT
>>> undergraduates. This might mean that we spend the money ourselves or
>>> this might mean that we give it to student groups who can use it.
>>> There are plenty of student groups who do wonderful and amazing
>>> things. All of us can think of student groups which get much of their
>>> funding from the UA which have made our time at MIT more worthwhile.
>>> Our goal, as the UA, should not be to do awesome things, but rather to
>>> see that awesome things get done.
>>>
>>> Sometimes, of course, this will mean that we should spend money on
>>> projects conceived by the UA and sometimes this will mean that we
>>> should give money to student groups. However, there is a natural,
>>> institutional bias toward spending the money ourselves. We need to
>>> fight that bias. Since we, the UA, get first crack at the money, it's
>>> easy to think of cool things which we can do with the money while
>>> forgetting about the very real and very cool things which student
>>> groups will *not* be able to do without that money. We can see this
>>> "mission creep" in UA funding in the way that the money allocated to
>>> UA committees has increased in past years. Yes, the UA does more with
>>> the increased money, but it is not always clear that it's spent better
>>> than it could be spent by student groups. The standards which hold for
>>> receiving funding from the UA general budget should be analogous to
>>> the standards which hold for receiving funding from UA Finboard. I
>>> will note that while UA committees received basically everything that
>>> they asked for in the Fall UA budget, student groups which applied to
>>> UA Finboard received less than 30% of their requests in the most
>>> recent funding cycle.
>>>
>>> Therefore, during the Spring 2010 budgeting process, I intend to push
>>> for allocating more money for student groups. Projects which we choose
>>> not to fund from the UA general budget can seek funding through UA
>>> Finboard, from LEF or ARCADE, from the MIT Administration, or from
>>> other funding sources.
>>>
>>> Please discuss.
>>>
>>> Alex Schwendner
>>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:52 AM, Alex Dehnert (UA Treasurer)
>>> <ua-treasurer@mit.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> As several people have pointed out, the UA spends quite a bit of
>>>>> money on
>>>>> events (about a third of last semester's budget) and focused
>>>>> projects (like
>>>>> PLUS --- about a tenth of last semester's UA budget). As Andrew
>>>>> Lukmann
>>>>> pointed out last week, committees are spending almost twice as
>>>>> much in Fall
>>>>> 2009's budget as in Spring 2007's budget.
>>>>>
>>>>> Unfortunately, it is now a little bit late to make major changes
>>>>> to the
>>>>> Fall 2009 budget. Last week's meeting was intended to allow that,
>>>>> and we
>>>>> spent a great deal of time on it then. I also solicited feedback
>>>>> late Friday
>>>>> night (or really Saturday morning), and didn't receive any. Of
>>>>> course, you
>>>>> are well within your rights to amend the budget at this point.
>>>>> (Though
>>>>> Athletics Weekend has already happened, so I'd rather you didn't
>>>>> amend
>>>>> that...)
>>>>>
>>>>> However, the Spring 2010 budget has not begun being compiled. In
>>>>> preparing
>>>>> the the Fall 2009 budget, I (and I believe committee chairs and
>>>>> the Special
>>>>> Budgetary Committee) generally followed precedent as to events and
>>>>> amounts.
>>>>>
>>>>> In some sense, there are (at least) two options for guiding
>>>>> principles to
>>>>> take in producing the budget:
>>>>> (1) Many of the UA-run events are more useful than the events and
>>>>> programming (Finboard-funded) student groups would spend the money on
>>>>> (2) Alternatively, that events and programs such as Athletics
>>>>> Weekend or
>>>>> PLUS aren't worth taking the money away from those student groups
>>>>>
>>>>> We've recently been defaulting to the former guiding principle.
>>>>> However, I
>>>>> would encourage the Senate to seriously consider which is
>>>>> preferable and
>>>>> pass appropriate legislation indicating a preference.
>>>>>
>>>>> I would be *thrilled* to have such guidance, and would happily
>>>>> incorporate
>>>>> it into next semester's budget. (I warn you, however, that
>>>>> committee chairs
>>>>> will probably be asked to begin budgeting in about two weeks.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Alex Dehnert
>>>>> UA Treasurer
>>>>>
>>
>
