Other people have posted similar concerns, so here is hoping this doesn't also get declined by USG.
It has come to my attention that USG has been irresponsibly and unjustifiably allocating money to itself during the allocations to governing bodies at the end of the academic year. As some of you may know, there are multiple governing bodies on campus and each receives an allocation of money from USG in the Spring semester for the following year. Here is the breakdown of allocations:
- BSO: $302,000 (to be split between all 180+ organizations on campus)
- MAC: $242,000 (to put on all the wonderful weekly events, E-Days, and much more!)
- Board of Student Media: $36,136 (to be split between all student media groups, i.e. Mines Internet Radio, Oredigger, High Grade)
- International Student Council: $33,355 (to be split between all 14+ international student groups)
- Panhellenic Council: $21,430 (Sorority Events)
- InterFraternity Council: $17,902 (Fraternity Events)
- Student Athletic Advisory Committee: $12,377
- USG: $50,593
Think critically about what these organizations do for campus in a capacity which requires monetary funding. While USG may not be the lowest on this list, they definitely do not need to allocate themselves $50,000 for this school year when they had $23,000 left over from last year (between all class budgets and the USG Exec budget). This is one-sixth of what is allocated to BSO, who then allocates to ALL other 180+ clubs on campus. Not to mention that the biggest expenditure that USG has incurred this year was a senate and governing body retreat which incurred a cost of $2,700 just for the resort in Winter Park. If you add in the additional costs incurred, the retreats total sums around $4,000. This entire semester USG has only spent about $18,000 (which additionally includes paying the President, Vice President, and Treasurer). If you’d like to double check the validity of this information, just go to OrgSync (Search Student Organization Finances -> Treasury -> Manage Checkbooks -> Search for USG). Here you can see all the student organization checkbooks, of which, USG definitely has the largest allocated budget. This seems backwards since many of the tier 3 organizations on this campus do much more than USG. Additionally, USG claims it is using this increased funding to support Digger Drive, of which there is no evidence on their account checkbooks (and Digger Drive is estimated to cost about $5,000 /student because it is not utilized, it would be cheaper to just pay for student Ubers…).
I don’t know about everyone else, but I think it is unfair to allow an organization to irresponsibly allocate the only accessible form of funding from student fees to itself.