The Associated Students of Madison's Student Services Finance Committee will be the next to consider how to trim UW-Madison student organization budgets, in accordance with a request from Chancellor John Wiley to reduce the budgets by $140,000.
According to a letter from ASM Chair Jessica Miller to the Student Council Thursday, SSFC will consider the budgets at its meeting Monday.
Wiley met with student government leadership a few weeks ago, mandating a reduction in the student fee budget to limit the percentage increase to less than 10 percent.
Wiley said he did not want the increase in those budgets to be more than the increases in other areas like tuition.
\It has yet to be determined exactly how the groups affected will be asked to reduce their individual budgets, but that decision will be made by SSFC,"" Miller said in the letter.
ASM Vice Chair and SSFC member Carl Camacho, who was part of the group that met with Wiley, said at Thursday's Student Council meeting a proposal for SSFC was being discussed.
Included in the proposal, he said, SSFC would cut 2 percent off of any organization's budget whose original proposal had increased by less than 20 percent. For groups whose budgets increased by 20 percent or more, Camacho said, the proposal would cut the budgets by 4 percent.
These cuts, he said, would result in an overall reduction of 5 percent in the total of all student organization budgets.
""We're not going to dissect the organizations budgets, we're going to do it the best way SSFC decides,"" Camacho said.
Last semester, SSFC members set student organization budgets, for which funds come from segregated fees, in a process of budget hearings and decisions. The Student Council then passed those budgets unaltered and submitted them to Wiley for approval.
Because of the $1.1 billion state budget and ensuing fiscal concerns, Wiley became the first chancellor to ask ASM to make further reductions in the proposed budgets.
Andrew Wallmeyer, an SSFC member, said he disagreed with the justification, made by Wiley, that it is necessary to further reduce student organization budgets on the basis that the state fiscal situation, which leaves the level of UW System funding uncertain, requires it.
""It's student money,"" Wallmeyer said. ""It doesn't come from the state.""
Wallmeyer added that he believes the current situation in regards to the student organization budgets is representative of how quickly the student process can be undermined.
