By: Alvin Wilson Staff Writer
The Incidental Fee Committee plans to increase the amount of money students pay each term in fees while decreasing the funds for some programs.
ASWOU is one of the programs that will see cuts in its budget, but only by a small percentage.
This year, ASWOU received $294,239 from the Incidental Fee funds. This amounted to 6.9 percent of the total IFC budget.
Next year, the committee will only allocate $290,699—or 6.6 percent of the total budget—to ASWOU, which is a two percent cut from this year’s budget.
ASWOU’s budget gets distributed to many different areas, according to Sofia LeVernois, director of business and finance for ASWOU.
“All the clubs at the university fall under ASWOU,” said LeVernois. “You have funded clubs and non-funded clubs. Non-funded clubs are not funded by IFC, and then you have the other umbrella of clubs that are funded by IFC.”
Some student organizations that receive IFC funds from ASWOU are the Art Club, Triangle Alliance, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlánand (MEChA), and the Business and Economics Club.
LeVernois said the clubs can spend their money on anything from food and refreshments to guest speakers.
Other than that, she said ASWOU’s funds go toward sending their members to Oregon Student Association (OSA) meetings. OSA is a nonprofit student advocacy group that represents 110,000 Oregon students.
“We have our payroll account, and we have OSA. That helps our OSA representatives go to the different board meetings that they have to attend,” she said.
ASWOU also pays for a retreat for its members at the beginning of the year.
“It’s all to help the office function so we can be at our top point to represent and help students,” LeVernois said.
The budgets for all clubs and ASWOU departments will be reduced evenly, according to Levernois, so no clubs will be affected more than others.
She said the cuts won’t be easy, but it’s not impossible to work around.
“After talking with Corban, it was decided that we would be able to handle a two percent cut,” said LeVernois. “We have to cut back, but it’s not really preventative. It can be a burden, but there’s things to alleviate that. It’s difficult, but it’s about reallocating.”
Contact the author at awilson15@wou.edu or on Twitter @awilsonjournal
