President Wim Wiewel recently signed off on the Student Fee Committee’s budget for the 2010–11 academic year. A total of $13.2 million was allocated, a decrease from last year’s allocation of $14.7 million. Next year, the student fee will remain at $218 per term for full-time students.
Wiewel received the final budget from the SFC on April 9 after it was approved by the Student Senate. The university president then had 10 days to go over the budget and make his recommendations to the SFC. However, he signed off on the budget after only six days.
“The support from the student fee is critical to the overall success of PSU’s student community,” Wiewel wrote in a letter to the SFC. “The effort you have made this year is very much appreciated.”
One reason for this year’s quick turn-around time was due to the level of communication between him and the SFC throughout the year, according to Wiewel. In addition, this year’s budget process was much more streamlined because of the SFC’s efforts in formulating guiding principles from which it could work.
After receiving this year’s final budget, Wiewel said he did not request any changes to be made.
Wiewel, who is a relatively new university president, said last year’s approval process was rushed, which produced a few surprises for him when he looked over the final budget.
“Due to a number of circumstances last year, at the end of the process, [the SFC] had a difficulty of making quorum, a lot was done last minute, so some errors were made,” said Michele Toppe, interim dean of students.
Last year, Wiewel raised objections when the previous SFC members decided to severely reduce funding for the athletic department, as well as when it dipped into the $1.7 million in reserve funds as a means to compensate for the $3.2 million deficit. Also, in the final budget, between $600,000–700,000 funding for Student Legal Services was also missing.
“Last year, before it came to me for a formal proposal, we had a discussion and I indicated some of my concerns with the [SFC] leadership,” Wiewel said. “The chair and vice chair then went back and modified the budget in accordance with my concerns.”
Wiewel said he told last year’s SFC chair that they could not reduce funding for athletics, and that they either had to find other cuts or raise the student fee by $18 a term.
The president said he was surprised when he later heard several SFC members made complaints to the Vanguard, attributing the student fee increase to his suggestion.
Current Chair of the SFC Johnnie Ozimkowski said he does not blame Wiewel for last year’s student fee increase.
“The previous year’s SFC made a lot of mistakes, which I had to fix,” Ozimkowski said. “I feel like they went into the budget process with an ‘us versus them’ attitude, whereas I came in with an ‘all for one and one for all’ attitude.”
According to Ozimkowski, the SFC achieved success this year by building relationships and by holding open forums to gain feedback from the university community. In addition, Ozimkowski said he is proud of his group for making quorum at every official meeting, as well as the fact that all seven members—who are elected by the student body—remained on the committee for the entire year.
One important decision that the SFC made this year was to put a cap on travel funding for all student groups, which impacted certain groups for which travel is an integral part of their mission.
“The student fee is paid by all students, so it’s very important that as many people as possible benefited from it,” Wiewel said.
The guiding principle for the SFC is to spread student fees broadly to a large spectrum of the university. Traveling does not fall into that category, since it gives a small amount of students that privilege, Toppe said.
“If you compare that to resources that the entire campus can benefit from, like the Student Rec Center, which three-fourths of our students have visited,” Toppe said. “I think the committee felt that those caps on travel were part of the principles to keep precious resources in our community and spread out.”
Toppe said she’s satisfied with this year’s SFC and compliments them on their attempt to fully communicate the rationale behind their decision to put a cap on travel, which was a contentious issue for some student groups.
“It seems to me they did just about everything right in terms of how to use leadership to build consensus in a group, even when there’s outside pressure to change something,” Wiewel said.
Ozimkowski said he appreciates the opportunity to work with the university this year.
“I feel like I have gotten a very good and deep understanding of how the university functions and the usefulness of student fees,” he said.
Though the president has signed off on the final budget, it must now go to the Oregon University System for approval.