The Pointer UW-Stevens Point Student Newspaper
The University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point Subsidy Budget has been written and finalized by the Student Senate as of Nov. 9.
“There are a lot of different organizations on campus that get funded by SGA. This is just the portion where we subsidize major departments on campus as opposed to student organizations, which happens in February,” said SGA budget director, Charlie Greiber. “This is a bulk of the segregated fees that we allocate. There are a couple other large portions that we haven’t gotten to yet, the student organizations being the big one.”
There are approximately 120 student organizations on campus that are eligible for the subsidy budget this year.
“That is up from about 100 since last year,” Greiber said.
Some of the groups in the Subsidy Budget have funding from multiple places and some of them have funding solely from SGA.
SGA only helps subsidize groups, like athletics, because they have other sources of funding.
“We are a major component to the funding it takes to run their operation. The same goes for Centertainment, the Tutoring Learning Center or Schmeeckle,” Greiber said. “We are a major portion of their funding, but by no means are we all of their funding. We’re just helping pay for a portion of it.”
Some of the other departments on the list include Group Fitness,Child Care, the Counseling Center, the Student Involvement and Employment Office, Theater and Dance, Intramurals and others.
“That’s where this portion of the funding will go. These are bigger departments that have full time staff who coordinate them. They are not like a student organization where it’s all students,” Greiber said. “For example, Centertainment has fulltime staff and the Tutoring Learning Center has full time employees. The departments are always going to be there, unlike student organizations which vary from year to year. Sometimes they’re active, sometimes they’re not.”
As it currently stands, SGA has actually saved students money.
“The departments overall either requested to stay approximately the same or have a small increase. Some of them got a small increase, and some of them had budgets that went down slightly, it kind of varies back and forth,” Greiber said.
As an overall trend, SGA hasallocated about $5,000 less for next year than they did this year.
“We were really very conscious about services that were going to be provided to the students, while keeping in mind the costs that ittakes to try those services, and we felt like we did a really good job of making responsible decisions as to where students prioritize spending their money the most, and this is the result of that,” Greiber said.
In total, the subsidized portion of the budget was a little over $1.7 million and SGA will address student organization funding in February, which had approximately $800,000 last year.
“Our committee is made up solely of students who do all of the decisions,” Greiber said. “It is the most student involved budgeting on the entire campus.”
The money also comes directly from the students and is decided upon by students.
“When a student sees their bill in the fall it says tuition and then it says segregated fees. All of this funding comes from those lines that say segregated fees,” Greiber said. “Last year there was approximately $600 per semester per student, which totals up to be about $13 million that we allocate for a lot of different departments on campus.”
SGA has a pretty clear picture of where they will be at the end of the year, with the Student Senate only allowing them to raise the total amount that has been budgeted by 1 percent.
“That doesn’t mean that there’s going to be a 1 percent increase, but there is up to 1 percent if needed,” Greiber said. “The net effect on students for next year is that there will be almost no change in the individual bill.”
Rachel Pukall
