Having spent several months last fall allocating segregated fees to student organizations for the 2002-'03 school year, the Associated Students of Madison's Student Services Finance Committee approved a plan Monday night that will cut an original budget of $140,000 to suit cuts mandated last month by UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley.
Taking advantage of his ability to amend the SSFC's budget plan, Wiley asked for the cut in response to the state budget crisis and the inevitable cuts to the UW System.
According to the plan, which passed unanimously, groups with a 20 percent increase from last year will be cut 2.2 percent, groups with a 20 to 100 percent increase will be cut 4.4 percent and groups with more than a 100 percent increase will be cut 6.6 percent.
Members of each organization will now decide individually how to accommodate the budget cuts.
Because SSFC is a student organization dealing with student money, some SSFC members were critical of Wiley's decision to cut any money.
\I think that this is one of the fairest ways to go about this, but I find the whole process frustrating because we have been asked to make the cuts for the political purposes of the chancellor,"" SSFC member Andrew Wallmeyer, a UW-Madison senior, said Monday.
The budget cuts made by SSFC will not include any group whose budget was decreased or held the same from this year to the 2002-'03 school year. The rest of the student organizations were divided into subsets based on their original percentage increases. The final cut, completing the total amount of $140,000, will be cut from the Associated Students of Madison Bus Pass program, which is already in contract and cannot be cut by the same standards as the rest of the student organizations.
""We divided it into three tiers [trying] to get the numbers that would get us closest to $140,000 and cut the rest from the bus pass program,"" SSFC member Rebecca Pifer said.
Pifer added she thought it was clear that a percentage cut across the board would not make any sense.
""It's a tough decision. We passed what we felt the groups deserved under the conditions. I [think] this is the best solution,"" SSFC member Brad Ladwig said.
