Student Government Association is asking for a $63,000 increase in funding for student organizations and an explanation for past cuts in the funding from the Student Fee Allocation Board in a resolution unanimously passed at the group’s April 8 meeting.
The Student Fee Allocation Board funds an array of student organizations, according to the resolution, including Activities Programming Board, SGA, Greek Life, Homecoming Committee, Northern Kentucky Leadership Institute, the Legacy Fund.
This resolution comes after a recent research effort and from several members of the group, revealed a 16.8 percent decrease in the annual monetary funding from the Student Fee Allocation Board since the 2007-08 school year.
This cut in funding contrasts a continued increase in the number of students participating in university organizations, specifically since the 2007-08 school year.
“The number of dollars for funding isn’t based on the number of students participating,” SGA Vice President Allen Horning said during the group’s meeting. “It’s really just a random number.”
SGA seeks to address this problem by asking for the $63,000 increase that will, according to Senators Corbin Brown and Jesse Wynne, make up for the cuts made since 2007-08.
It would make sense to return back to the amount of funding when it was at its highest state, when you look at the number of students participating in organizations then, compared to the number now, according to SGA Senator Ashley Hyden.
The Student Senate is also asking the university to use a consumer pricing index to determine future increases in the amounts of funding to be distributed.
“Northern Kentucky University already uses a CPI index for services such as food and housing for annual increases,” the resolution said, “which would be applicable for additional funding to the Student Fee Allocation Board based on tuition incensement.”
The idea of using a consumer pricing index as a basis was a topic that received a large amount of debate after the first reading of the resolution on April 1.
The group eventually decided that correlating the numbers with a consumer pricing index would be necessary to allow increases based on the varying factors that contribute to the amount of available funding, such as the cost of tuition.
The group’s adviser, Dean of Students Jeffrey Waple, explained briefly that past cuts in funding could be due to university budget cuts and the removal of Student Media funding out of the Student Fee Allocation Board funding in the 2011-12 school year, which took around $23,000 of the total funding with it.
Overall though, Waple seemed positive and optimistic about this resolution. “You guys have done the most research on this topic compared to any previous years’ SGA’s,” Waple said.
The next step in addressing this resolution, according to Waple, will be sending it to the offices of Vice President for Student Affairs Peter Gitau and to Waple himself.