Student Fees

The Student Advocacy Dept. is currently working on advocating for a student activities fee increase. Please review and provide feedback over the following statement:

An increased Student Activities Fee will be extremely beneficial to the UMBC student body by providing more funding for SGA sponsored events, SEB events, and student organizations. These include T-Payne, Homecoming and its assorted events, Pre-game Tailgates, Ecofest, and the Stress-Free Zone .

The fee will also aid in increasing services to students such as library DVDs, Leadershape and Readership Programs, Prove It!, and many more

This fee, unlike all others, has not increased in the past 5 years and is becoming more limited each year with rising costs and inflation.

Here's some groovy links to find out more about this issue:

Dave's blog entry on the history of student fees
http://cocreateumbc.blogspot.com/2008/01/student-activity-fee-flatline.html

SGA budgets
http://sga.umbc.edu/budgets/


Regards,

The Student Advocacy Dept.

Student Orgs and Money

I've just finished contacting a large number of student organizations who turned in budgets but didn't receive a whole lot of their requests in order to remind them that can and should apply for SGA funds by Additional Allocation. Emails went out to the President and Treasurer of all those clubs as listed in their Initial Budget Requests. So my conclusion is if you're a student organization and you have an event that you would like to see happen and need money for it, come ask for it. This is especially true for organizations that haven't receive any money or even very little this year from the SGA. If your president and treasurer didn't get an email from me, but you still want funding for more events please still do apply.

On the subject of Student Organizations and money, it has occurred to me that we are in danger of facing a situation where the fiscal year will end (June 30th) and a lot of funds that were given out for events will come back to the SGA. Some organizations have been contacted by my staff in order for us (the SGA) to try and help you spend your money and make these events happen. If your organization has received a lot of money and is facing difficulty with planning or executing an event please contact me and either I will help you or I will get someone to help you. If you have money left over from events that were less expensive or that didn't happen, reallocate those funds to something else. Let's see this year end with a bang and increase the number of happenings on campus from student orgs.

indek1@umbc.edu

Fiscal Responsibility

This year's SGA has been given an unique task - putting an unusually large General Ledger fund to work for students. This money has been given to us by students for the purpose of benefiting students, not for sitting in a university bank account where it can't even earn interest. Through projects like the Study Place and GPS system, and even more so with Prove It, we have tried to put this money back into the student community.

The way it works is that each year, the SGA budgets their income for various purposes. Whatever is unused at the end rolls into the GL, including unspent money allocated to student organizations. Because neither the SGA nor student organizations have been spending all their money for several years now, the GL has grown quite large.

As a result this years' SGA has an unprecedented ability to do things itself where other departments on campus may be falling short. While this is good in the short run for solving problems, I am concerned that not enough attention is being paid to affecting more lasting changes. The GL will not always be this large and if there comes a time when we need to tighten our fiscal belts, we need to have had progess in place. The alternative is that when the money runs low, all of our great initiatives die, and I don't think anybody wants to see that happen.

Prove What?

Happy November!

Now that we're through everybody's favorite part of October, it's time to look ahead to what's going to be happening this month.

• We established a record of 10 posts last month - I'm pretty sure we're going to top that this month.
• The Black and Gold Commission is hosting their second tailgate
• Student Organization Advocates are hosting a dinner for Student Org leaders
• The Senate puts the Idea Development Tool into practice and strives to become a more effective group
• Budget Deliberations finishing up
• Prove IT!

Wait, what was that last one? Prove what? Prove IT is an exciting new initiative sponsored by the SGA to help tap the creativity and enthusiasm of our campus community to make change at UMBC. It's a bold challenge - if you are walking around UMBC and think, "I wish this was different" we are inviting you to prove it by taking steps to turn that thought into a reality.

Here's how it works: We are going to be accepting applications from any loose association of students (i.e. you and a few friends) detailing their plan for doing something to positively impact the campus. No restrictions, just pure outside-the-box thinking. Applications can be submitted starting Monday through the end of December, so there is plenty of time to put some good effort into the idea.

However, the application process is just the beginning. The three best submissions, chosen by a committee comprised of students and administrators, will be presented to the campus community in a vote. The final winning group will receive $50,000 and backing of both the SGA and the campus administration to make their idea a reality before the end of Spring semester. That's $50,000 backing something that you and your friends dreamed up!

It doesn't stop there. As an incentive for doing all that work, the SGA is giving the winning group $5,000 to use however they wish. This is a payment of real money, folks - not a scholarship, not gift cards, but $5,000 in cash given directly to your group.

You will be seeing all kinds of advertisements for this initiative over the coming months, beginning with the official kick-off beneath the breezeway this Monday. This is the chance to prove to the rest of the campus that you have what it takes to change UMBC for the better. UMBC is packed with amazing students so I'm really looking forward to seeing all of the submissions. Start thinking, everybody.

Prove it!