[95] in UA Senate
Re: UA budgeting principles
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Adam Bockelie)
Wed Oct 14 23:58:32 2009
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:58:23 -0400
From: Adam Bockelie <bockelie@MIT.EDU>
To: Janet Li <jli12@MIT.EDU>
CC: Paul Youchak <youchakp@MIT.EDU>, Catherine Olsson <catherio@MIT.EDU>,
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: <f645609e0910142038j250e7005qf3a6da33c07f80e0@mail.gmail.com>
I would disagree. Being part of a committee/senate/anything else in the
UA is a lot of work, and most people are already busy with other
activities. Having money to spend on food for a meeting means that
people can focus on getting work done, not on searching for food between
meetings. People on committees are dedicated, and I don't think that
food is generally an incentive. But, I do think that food helps make
meetings more productive.
Janet Li wrote:
> I really like Catherine's idea of the collection jar for food for Senate
> meetings. I also agree with Paul that it doesn't seem all that necessary
> to have so much of our budget go towards providing food at committee
> meetings. People on committees should be dedicated enough to not need
> food as an incentive to come to meetings, anyway.
> ---
> Janet Li
> Baker Senator
> MIT Class of 2012
> Dept. of Biological Engineering
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 11:07 PM, Paul Youchak <youchakp@mit.edu
> <mailto:youchakp@mit.edu>> wrote:
>
> 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 <mailto: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
>
>
>
>
>
--
Adam Bockelie
801.209.7233
<bockelie@mit.edu>
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Class of 2011
