Published 2010-11-09T15:53:00Z”/>

Walter Ford

With the high cost of education seemingly always on the rise, it should be comforting to students that Associated Students government officials are using funds frugally.

The A.S. Government Affairs Office is allotted $227,292 for the 2010-2011 school year, which takes up about 12 percent of the A.S. activity fee fund.

About $200,000 of those funds go to officer training, officer stipends, professional staff salaries and other operating costs for the Government Affairs Office, said Jon Slaughter, director of A.S. programs and government affairs.

The A.S. president is allotted a budget of $5,000, and the rest of the officers receive $5,200 that is divided between them, said Denise Crosswhite, A.S. programs and government affairs coordinator.

“When I started here four years ago, officer budgets were like $1,500 each,” she said. “At the end of the year, what I realized was nobody really spent any money.”

When training officers before taking office, an emphasis is put on being thrifty, Crosswhite said.

“‘Cause number one – I’m frugal,” she said. “I push that on them, in that I think money should be spent in the right way.”

With the A.S. activity fee, there is a conscious effort to challenge each of the programs to work immediately with 20 percent less funding, Slaughter said.

“Resources are tight and they may remain tight for a few years because the activity fee’s health is based on enrollment,” he said. “So if enrollment’s not healthy, the activity fee’s not healthy.”

Officers must have the mindset that they have been entrusted by the students with their money, Slaughter said.

A.S. President Amro Jayousi has dipped into his budget only twice this semester, Jayousi said. The biggest expenditure from Jayousi’s budget was $1,300 to hire a personal assistant.

“I really struggled on whether I should hire one,” Jayousi said. “But I still have a lot of money to spend on other things.”

The hiring of an assistant takes up 26 percent of Jayousi’s budget.

The Rock the Vote event cost nearly $420, and Jayousi contributed $330 of that amount from his budget, he said.

“If we were guaranteed to get more students to vote, I would have put even more money toward the event,” Jayousi said.

Jayousi plans to fund a political forum to discuss the proposed moving of the election dates in the near future, he said.

Executive Vice President Kristina Barger has the second largest officer budget, totaling $1,800.

About $850 of that budget has been used to fund an ice cream social for all A.S. employees and the A.S. Carnival and Involvement Fair, Crosswhite said.

The director of legislative affairs is allotted $1,200 because of the events and travel involved with his position, she said.

The director of university affairs and commissioner of environmental affairs both are allotted $400 in their budgets, and the commissioner of community affairs gets a $900 budget – $500 of which is given with the Community Affairs Council Award for outstanding CAVE staff member, Crosswhite said. None of those officers have used funds from their budgets as of yet.

Officers do sometimes use other sources of funding outside personal budgets.

Multicultural Night was put on using funds from the Multicultural Affairs Council budget, Crosswhite said.

Jayousi would like to see funds used to pay for A.S. officers and program directors to have a two-day team-building retreat put to a different use, he said.

“Others find that going to a different environment and swimming and wakeboarding is healthy for team building,” Jayousi said. “Personally, I’m not too fond of retreats and spending money on retreats, but I do think team-building activities, done as frugal as they can be, can be productive.”

If money from an officer’s budget goes unused, it will be returned to the A.S. activity fee fund to help prevent dipping into the reserves, Slaughter said.

Walter Ford can be reached at [email protected]