IPFW Student Senate Approves Allocation Committee’s Budget for Next School Year

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.”

An Inside Look at the IPSGA All-Branch Meeting

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.

 

IPFW Says No More Philosophy

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The recommendations started promisingly enough.

Little did faculty know, philosophy professors, among others, would lose their jobs, and students could no longer earn a degree in this and other departments.

“They are planning to cut our program and our department as of January first,” said Charlene Elsby, assistant professor in philosophy.

But philosophy is just one of the many programs IPFW plans to cut next year part of the University Strategic Alignment Process.

The Legislative Services Agency was brought in to review to programs and departments that listed recommendations they should complete by the university.

“They call it a recommendation,” Elsby said. “But as soon as they made the recommendations, they suspended admissions to our program.”

She said a month after the philosophy department received its notice, they started to change the courses based on the report.

According to the “USAP Recommendations 2.2 and 2.3”, the philosophy department is to “develop and implement a plan for attracting and retaining students from introductory courses.”

The report showed the department had a 11.6 percent graduation efficiency and an average of 27.6 graduates within the major every year, higher than many programs like biology and computer science that were not suspended.

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Students affected by the suspensions and cuts were also vocal.

Shortly after the announcement, on Nov. 2 and 3, students and faculty gathered to share their frustrations, as a Teach-In was held outside of Kettler Hall. It drew 1,000 students throughout both days.

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“I wanted to be out here because I am kind of passionate about this,” said Jalyn Ely, a communication major.

Ely said she is passionate about education because she enjoys learning and studying. It is important to her that other people get those opportunities also.

She is afraid of how the suspension of these programs is going to affect the community in the future. Ely is not from Fort Wayne, but enjoys it here. She is afraid the cuts will force students to leave IPFW to find a better education.

“I have three younger siblings,” she said. “At least two of them were considering coming to IPFW, and they’re not anymore.”

She explained the protest is encouraging, because students are willing to listen and talk about why they do not want these cuts to happen.

Ely said she is also skeptical with the metrics they are using to cut the programs, especially the philosophy department.

“You can’t justify cutting a foundational discipline,” she said. “They didn’t even have a good reason for philosophy.”

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Steve Carr, chair of the communication department, said he does not understand why they want departments to market themselves more.

He said universities usually hire the faculty to teach classes and conduct research.

“Wanting faculty to have to conduct marketing and recruitment on top of everything else they already do seem to undermine the core mission,” he said.

He said with Indiana University and Purdue University splitting, as a result of the recommendations, it has forced Purdue to look at all the programs and make cuts.

According to the LSA study, IU will change hands with being in control of the nursing program, causing it to change from a Purdue degree to an Indiana degree.

“Purdue is going to lose a lot of money because of that,” he said. “Purdue sees a lot of small programs that either pay for themselves or make money for the university.

Charlene Elsby is not sure what is going to happen to her after the cuts have been made either. She said there has been a lack of communication between the faculty and Vice Chancellor Carl Drummond on what is to come.

“I have a contract until May,” she said. Whether that will be renewed is completely up in the air.”