Former Associated Students President Michael Pratt’s term came to an end this spring.
For social gatherings and support from former A.S. President Michael Pratt isn’t allocated a specific budget but rather intends on supporting students and organizations from the A.S. budget activity fee.
“This activity fee is what you think about of government affairs. The traditional government function of the A.S.,” Pratt said.
“As president, I didn’t have a budget. The budget I was allocated was used so I could attend CSSA. We’ve been doing a lot of the programs for a long time so I don’t think anything in the budget isn’t being in good use of our student’s dollars.”
The budget A.S. receives is allocated towards Wildcat Way programs that support students. This includes a Halloween event where they provided pizza and water to ensure students are stable to make it home safe.
“We do the big Labor Day event where we encourage people to do other things rather than float down the river,” said Pratt. “There’s those that are new that are a good use of student dollars, all the way to the programs that we continue to operate such as CAVE, GSEC, KCSC radio, all of those opportunities for hundreds of students to participate.”
Pratt also says an increase in the Senate budget is helping A.S. support students. He said he believes the budget is always about serving the most students in the best way possible.
“We’ve also increased the Senate budget to have a total of $9,000 to coordinate events and increase our reach at different areas of their individual college so we can learn about issues. If you connect with two or three students in a major, anytime there is an issue you’ll learn about it right away and we can help represent students in that aspect.”
As Pratt’s term ends as A.S. president May 15, he hopes that next year the new president Dylan Gray will bring more to the table. He said that the president will receive a $5,000 budget that is intended for any necessities and new projects.
“With this last budget cycle, we made the commitment to allow the president a $5,000 budget, I know a portion of that is to attend Hill Day to represent Chico State in D.C. with the legislators there. It’s typically something we’ve been wanting to do but our budget was fairly constrained and now we have the opportunity to make sure that happens.”
In the A.S. Debate Dylan Gray informed form attendees his position towards allocating his budget in a plan to form an event called Energize Chico State.
“The president gets a budget which I plan on working with the Wildcat Leadership Institute to pour resources into them from my personal budget so that we can have it and bridge that gap.”
More information on this can be found https://theorion.com/64511/news/as-presidential-candidates-put-diversity-at-forefront-of-campaign/.
Karen Limones can be reached at [email protected] or @theorion_news on Twitter.
