The Student Senate voted Thursday to change the way student government spends money, but postponed deciding student radio station K-UTE’s fate.
Four bills came before the Senate proposing changes to the financial policies and procedures in Redbook, the constitution and bylaws of the Associated Students of the University of Utah.
After a presentation from K-UTE’s graduate adviser Beth Fratkin and much discussion, the Senate unanimously tabled a proposal to stop automatically funding K-UTE, the student radio station at the U. According to current Redbook policy, K-UTE receives 2 percent of ASUU’s annual budget, which translates to $24,000 from ASUU’s $1.2 million budget. President Ben Lowe suggested cutting K-UTE’s funding two weeks ago.
“Nobody has had enough time to research this topic,” said Sen. Sam Swenson, humanities, as he proposed to table the bill. Swenson also asked to form a committee of senators, General Assembly members and interested parties to research K-UTE’s options.
“This will give us an opportunity to try and work out these problems,” Fratkin said. “I think once they are more informed of the situation, it will be persuasive.”
This is the third time in four years that K-UTE’s funding has been threatened, according to Fratkin.
“I believe they will be able to come up with the best solution,” Lowe said. “I completely support the Senate’s decision to table the bill to make the best decision for students.”
Although the Senate did not decide to cut K-UTE’s percentage of the budget, it passed a bill making a series of small changes to Redbook regarding how $882,000 of ASUU’s annual $1.2 million budget is spent. The remaining money will be budgeted later.
Redbook already has guidelines set for certain ASUU accounts to receive a percentage of the annual budget. The Presenter’s Office receives 39 percent of the budget, and child care gets 2.5 percent. K-UTE’s funding also comes from these constitutional guarantees.
The bill passed through the Senate protects the funding of many more areas of ASUU. Along with the Presenter’s Office and child care, the Executive Cabinet, Assembly contingency fund and student groups will all have protected funds if this bill passes the Assembly at its meeting next Tuesday.
Now, the Executive Cabinet will receive no less than 11 percent of the ASUU budget for their operating accounts through this legislation. This amounts to $132,000, which is $11,300 less than the Cabinet received this year, even after legislation added $36,750 to the originally smaller Cabinet budgets in Fall Semester.
“If [the Cabinet members] don’t function, ASUU won’t function like it should,” Lowe told the Senate. “In order to provide the services we provide, we need the funds.”
Cabinet funds pay for ASUU services such as the Student Advocacy Office and Cabinet members’ stipends.
Student groups will receive 11 percent of the budget through this legislation, which is less than the 13 percent budgeted for student groups last year. Since ASUU bases the budget on $1.2 million, student groups will actually receive more money. Last year’s budget was $1 million.
The Assembly contingency account will receive 5 percent of ASUU’s budget through this legislation, about $60,000, a sizeable increase from this year’s original Assembly budget of $34,000. Legislation later added $25,000 to that fund.
The original legislation reduced the Senate contingency from 4 percent to 3 percent of ASUU’s annual budget. The Senate amended this back to 4 percent, and then later re-amended it to 3 percent.
The other financial bills passed through the Senate clarify compensation of student senators and allow student groups to purchase equipment with ASUU funds.