Although A.S. President Harry Khanna’s newest multimillion dollar budget is largely generous to campus organizations, college councils are protesting the slimmer funding offered to college-specific events.

The first week of negotiations between A.S. councilmembers and Khanna has yielded four revisions to the budget, which currently sacrifices college-council funding for money reserved for campuswide organizations. Khanna’s proposal cut college-council funding by about $2,000 total from former President Christopher Sweeten’s budget, while he kept money for student organizations at relatively the same level.

The move was made to streamline the process through which student organizations receive funding, Khanna said. The more money placed in the campuswide pot, the less student organizations will complain about current funding rules, which send them to each college council — all with different budget bylaws — to get money, Khanna said.

Khanna also modified the structure of funding for student organizations by setting aside $72,700 for “tradition events,” including $7,000 for the UCSD Cultural Celebration and $1,000 for the Black Student Union’s Kwanzaa event.

To qualify for that money, an event would have to have had consistent student attendance for 10 years. Such criteria are not only arbitrary, but completely ignore multiple other campus programs, according to former A.S. presidential candidate and Earl Warren College senior Daniel Watts.

“[Khanna is] giving special treatment to other clubs that supported his slate, to the tune of $72,000, at the expense of every other student organization on campus,” Watts stated in an e-mail.

Khanna denied any special treatment in his budget, and said that entities that supported him during his presidential campaign, such as the Academic Success Program, suffered reductions in his budget.

Money for “tradition events” cuts off programs conducted by Sixth College, which has only been in existence since 2002. In its current state, the college will face many funding problems, according to Sixth College Junior Senator Cindy Ly.

“Even when I’ve graduated, there is still not going to [be] a tradition event at Sixth College that will be eligible for money,” she said.

In addition to the funding reductions made to college councils, the lack of Sixth College-specific money in the “tradition events” pot will put the college’s organizations in a spot, Ly said.

“Although it may be a headache to some people, I liked having students come to each council to request money for their event,” she said. “Each college has their own finance committee, so they should be able to go over each event and decide if it should get funding from that college.”

While Khanna’s budget puts financial pressure on college councils, it will simplify college-specific funding requests that, for the most part, go to the A.S. Council anyway, according to Vice President Finance Conrad Ohashi.

“I think what it really comes down to, though, is this: A.S. is extremely poor, while some colleges are pretty self-sufficient,” he stated in an e-mail.

While former Thurgood Marshall College Senior Senator Kate Pillon said she neither supported nor opposed Khanna’s plan, she cautioned the council that major reforms to the budget would require close scrutiny. Pillon was a staunch supporter of college-council funding during her term as senator.

“The switch from having student organizations go to college councils to the A.S. Council for funding needs to be made carefully,” she said. “People need to make sure that all the organizations that would have gotten money from the colleges get the same from the council as a whole.”

In his latest drafts, Khanna also created several stipends for staff in A.S. Council offices, and re-established stipends for managers in A.S. services such as Student-Run Television. The inclusion of such stipends further shows Khanna’s commitment to his own supporters, according to Watts, who promised to cut stipends during both of his unsuccessful campaigns for A.S. president.

“It’s part of a culture of corruption,” he said. “Those stipends don’t benefit any students other than the ones that get it.”

Khanna contends that stipends are needed to attract strong leadership.

“Why are all the other UC’s A.S.’s so influential and powerful?” he stated in an e-mail. “Because they take it seriously. Because they pay their staff and their students like it’s serious business.”

Readers can contact Charles Nguyen at [email protected].

22/05/2006