Author: Aaron Stevens

The Student Senate reviewed and approved the Allocation Committee’s final budget request for the next school year.

Over the past couple months, IPFW organization members have been presenting their budget requests to the committee.

The Allocation Committee received $1,015,226.50 of requests from organizations and only had a budget of $842,412.83.

Victoria Spencer, IPSGA coordinator, said the committee did well, and were thoughtful in their deliberations.

“They went into it very frugally minded to find cost savings to try to balance the budget,” she said. “They had to reconcile more than a million dollars in requests with less than $850,000.”

Spencer said the budget has been approved by the Student Senate and it will go to the office of the dean of students, Eric Norman. It will then be passed to Chancellor Vicky Carwein, and will head to Purdue to be finalized.

“Generally, once the senate approves it, changes are not made,” she said. “This is more of a student lead process and the institution has respected that.”

The biggest budget cut was to the IPSGA student activities board. They received $200,000 total, for next school year. The budget is $24,800 less than they received this year.

Maggie Baren, vice president of programming, said as long as members know how to shop around and have people who understand the circumstances, they can still do a lot with what they have.

“We were rather fortunate this year,” Baren said. “For homecoming, we spent significantly less than what we were allocated. It goes to show that you can put on a pretty awesome event rather than to spend a substantial amount of money.”

Baren said students should not know a difference in the cut the student activities board received. The members on the board know ways to continue to give out awesome merchandise without going over the budget.

The IPSGA senate also received a cut to their budget. They will get $50,000 next school year, $14,000 less than what they had this year.

Alexander Sanderson, vice president of legislation, said he is not really happy, but understands what they received such a large cut.

He said about one-sixth of their budget went to programs requesting money. This year the student senate set an amendment which lowers the funding cap for an organization based on the money they received the last couple years. This prevents the senate from losing most of their funding to support organizations.

“It should not affect anyone trying to start a program,” Sanderson said. “In regards to funding, programs can still ask but the cap will be less. We hope this will get programs to be a little self-efficient.”

James Hoppes, vice president of finance, said the IPSGA is always the first branch to make sacrifices in terms of the budget.

“When it comes to the IPSGA budgets, they tend to ask for more money, with the mindset that they will be getting cut down,” he said. “All three go into it asking for more just so they can get cut and hopefully get a number that they actually need.”

Hoppes said with the decrease in the budget, they will have less flexibility with spending and helping assist programs. Just because an organization’s budget dropped does not mean they disapprove the program. It is because they do not have enough money.

Hoppes said there are a lot of unknowns about the budget for next spring.

“It is hard to say because of the whole university split,” he said. “It could be higher or it could be lower. It also depends on banded tuition because it may effect student fees. It is just too early to tell.”

The IPSGA student senate held an all-branch meeting on Monday to discuss banded tuition, Spring Fling and suggestions on campus.

The student senate tries to hold at least one all-branch meeting every semester. Some branches included are the executive branch, media board, and the student activities board.

Victoria Spencer, IPSGA coordinator, said they generally have two all-branch meetings a year depending on what is going on at IPFW or IPSGA itself.

“This is a chance for all the branches of IPSGA to check in with each other to see what is going on,” Spencer said. “This is to see if there is anything that needs (to be) addressed or give branch reports.”

Last week, the IPSGA media attended an IPFW Banded Tuition Panel and discussed the proposed tuition changes.

Diana Jackson, director of administrative business services, said the biggest part is to have students register for a full load of classes, which is 15 credit hours.

“The banded tuition can be looked at as a flat rate,” Jackson said. “If the student takes 12 to 18 credit hours, they will pay a one cent amount.”

IPSGA members also discussed updates on Spring Fling and had an open discussion about suggestions from other branches on ways to improve campus for students.

Spencer said the focus for the meeting was to talk about things that organizations need help with, such as finding people to help plan Spring Fling in a couple months, and give the executive officers a chance to provide information about banded tuition.

“Basically if there are some changes coming up that will affect students, our officers usually work with the university to get more information to share with the branches,” Spencer said. “That is typically why we like to meet.”

James Hoppes, vice president of finance, said the meeting is not just for updates but an opportunity for members of other branches to meet everyone involved in IPSGA.

“We also like to have these meetings so we get to learn who everyone else is,” Hoppes said. “Also the more input that we receive from other branches, the better we can work on improving the campus.”

Sara Wegmann, media board editor, said this was her first time being involved in the all-branch meeting.

She started working for IPSGA this spring semester and did not realize how many programs are in the student government.

“I think this was very beneficial,” Wegmann said. “I got to personally learn a lot more about IPSGA and some of committees that I did not know existed before now. It provides information to everyone in the branches that we usually do not hear from during the week.”

Wegmann said this meeting also provided a lot of information about upcoming changes to campus she was not aware about, such as the banded tuition and Spring Fling.

She also did not realize how many volunteer opportunities there were on campus that the members were sharing during open discussions.

“It was extremely helpful for me and knowing that there are other things I can volunteer at other then my specific spot at the media board,” Wegmann said.

Though this is the only planned meeting of the semester, IPSGA officials said there will be another all-branch meeting if needed.