Student organizations (orgs), such as Associated Student Government (ASG), CMU-TV and Mavrides, among others, voted during the Fall 2020 semester on how to allocate student fees.
Students at Colorado Mesa University (CMU) currently pay $32.10 per credit hour in student fees, and these fund various parts of the university. Student fees are affected by enrollment numbers, and could increase or decrease depending on how many students are attending per semester.
Student orgs, as a part of Student Life, receive a portion of student fees to fund themselves every semester. Every two years, during a process called the biennial, student orgs vote on how to divvy up the funds, and if certain organizations will have a change in their budgets or not.
The total budget for student orgs approved for the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, which will kick in starting the __ Fall semester, was $1.251 million in total, which is essentially the same as the previous biennial.
“For the biennial, [the orgs] came and presented their budgets for the next two years to ASG, and some increased and some decreased, but we can say the total requested amount stayed the same,” Chief Financial Officer of ASG Logan Taylor said.
Because two more orgs needed to be funded but the amount stayed the same, many organizations took budget cuts. Among the organizations that had their budgets decrease the most were the Club Advisory Board (CAB) and Outdoor Program (OP), which saw a decrease of $30,551 and $12,477, respectively. The OP is not purely funded from student fees, however, and their budget wasn’t necessarily affected as a total by decreasing their portion of fee money.
The two new orgs to consider budgeting for were the Rowdy Wranglers and the Student Control Reserve Fund (SCRF), and combined were approved for over $50,000. SCRF only received money because they have not been funded for the past few years.
“It was communicated to all, not just student orgs, but through all departments of the school that it is imperative that we’re mindful with what we request and what we use; to be conservative because we don’t know what the next two years are going to look like due to the implications of COVID,” ASG President Angel Bautista said.
While the student orgs are a part of Student Life, Student Life itself has its own budget which is not affected by the biennial.
A few orgs received more money than last time — this includes Little Mavs Daycare Center (almost $10,000 more) and ASG (almost $7,000 more), among others.
The budget has been set for the next two years, and won’t be changed until the next biennial. Even if student fees go up or down, the money that student orgs receive won’t change.
