ASUA Senate Meeting (9/2) Preview

In its continuing efforts to increase transparency, ASUA has now begun releasing Senate agendas the day before the meeting. The document can be downloaded here.

The main items up for discussion are:

• Item # S09212 ASUA Budget 2009-2010 (Operations Accounts)

For background information on this debate,  read here.

• Item # S09215 ASUA Bylaw Changes

The changes are clerical, and read as follows:

Section 11.01  ASUA Appropriations Board and Club Advocates

3. Initial Funding

(a) The Appropriations Board shall be responsible for allocating initial funding.

(b) All clubs and organizations receiving initial funding need only be recognized through the Center for Student Involvement and Leadership (CSIL) ASUA Club Resource Center .

10. Recognition of Clubs and Organizations.

i) All clubs and organizations requesting special funding shall be recognized by

The Center of Student Involvement and Leadership (CSIL) ASUA Club Resource Center and must have turned in a signed ASUA Club Funding form before special funding can be utilized.

This effectively recognizes the reality on the ground, as CSIL no longer does club certification, but it’s mildly interesting nonetheless.

• Item # S092126 Arizona Students’ Association Presentation

This week’s game? Take a drink every time someone references “SAFRA.”

Students to ASUA: “WTF? Where’s the funding?”

The official Poverty Bash numbers are in, and it’s ugly. From the Star:

The first concert in Arizona Stadium since 1977 lost nearly $1 million.

The Last Smash Platinum Bash, which featured Jay-Z and Kelly Clarkson, ended up $917,000 in the red. The concert cost $1,420,000, and ticket and merchandise sales brought in only $503,502, according to student organizers.

. . .

The ASUA will apply its entire emergency budget reserve — $350,000 — to help cover the shortfall.

The rest will come from the UA BookStores, which has been sharing a portion of its revenues to support the ASUA since the 1930s.

There’s not really any way to spin this, and ASUA doesn’t really try:

Tommy Bruce, outgoing president of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona, blamed the event’s struggles on the economy.

“Nobody predicted the economy would be the way it is now last May,” he said.

This site can resemble a broken record when it comes to transparency, but here again is a case where more transparency might have helped ASUA. Bruce was insistent on keeping the concert super-secret throughout the planning process, ensuring that by the time the event was actually announced, students were already reeling from the effects of the economy. Had even a broad framework of the plan been released in the fall semester – something like “ASUA to host concert at Arizona Stadium” – students might have been able to anticipate the event, rather than being blindsided post-spring break.

All of this is incidental to Bruce’s main point, which has a bit of merit to it. Yet it’s curious how little sympathy he has had for this argument in the past, when it was coming from the state legislature. After all, they’ve been dealing with the economic downturn a bit themselves:

The Legislature’s budget staff announced Wednesday that its projection for the current $9.9 billion budget’s shortfall is now nearly $1.6 billion, up from $1.2 billion previously.

Budget director Richard Stavneak announced the increase during a briefing for lawmakers on the scope of the state’s budget woes. Legislators are contemplating cuts in most state programs.

When such cuts were proposed, President Bruce replied, “WTF? Where’s the funding?” Now, the tables have been turned:

That means less money for the ASUA over the next five years.

How much less? This year, the BookStores shared about $530,000 of their revenue with the student group. For each of the next five years that amount will be reduced by $114,000.

As a direct result of this master plan it will be the students, whether they be seeking club funding or the services that ASUA provides, who will be wondering where the money has gone. Meanwhile, the crowned Dauphin Nagata serves as a more ideologically agreeable Brewer figure – just as Napolitano spent and spent, leaving Brewer to pay the bills, so Bruce will leave Nagata will a rather neutered ASUA. Perhaps Nagata will be tempted to blame his former master for troubles down the road? Whatever happens, there’s enough irony here that Saraswati might come on down to Tucson and shower goodwill on all of us – and by good will, I mean G&Ts (it’s summertime. . .).

It’s not all bad news, though. From an intra-ASUA perspective, the association won’t be spending as prolifigately as they have, and will instead have to focus on more marginal matters – some of which will be related to good governance. From an external perspective, this snafu might just be enough to spark interest in ASUA that doesn’t relate to becoming part of the Family. Such a reformist movement – ideally, sponsored by a quasi-PAC organization akin to the CCC – would serve as a more moderate distillation of the anarchist fury that arose last year, and possibly bring back elections with competing ideas.

Still, I wouldn’t buy your fall semester books at the UA Bookstore if you don’t like how the profit is being spent.

UPDATE: Laura Donovan beat this site to the punch, and delivers a far pithier judgement. “Stop throwing concerts” is far from the worst policy proposal that I’ve heard.

Reproach from the Regents

In an unexpected vote yesterday, the Arizona Board of Regents rejected President Shelton’s proposed $545 tuition hike for Arizona residents, approving instead a $206 increase for in-state students—the smallest in seven years, according to the Arizona Daily Star. That’s less than a third of the $659 increase Shelton wanted to propose, which he trimmed to $545 before asking the Regents for approval. Unfortunately, out of state students are out of luck: the Regents unanimously approved Shelton’s initial increase of $2,575—a 15 percent increase on last year—without any reductions.

The Board approved tuition submissions from ASU President Michael Crow and NAU President John Haeger without much controversy, but when Shelton’s proposal came before the Board, Regent Anne Mariucci’s deciding vote scuttled the plan. From the Star:

While regents approved the plans of the presidents of both Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University to push their in-state undergraduate tuition past $6,000 annually, the board singled out the UA in what one regent said should serve as a catalyst for it to change how it operates.

UA leaders were visibly upset by the action, which hinged on a vote by Regent Anne Mariucci and set the future total cost of attending the UA, including mandatory fees, at $5,737 — making it the least expensive of all three public universities.

[…]

After voting, Mariucci said she hoped the lower increase would serve as a wake-up call.

“The degree to which the UA has mobilized on the need to fundamentally reinvent itself needs to be accelerated,” she said.

Let me be the first to praise Mariucci. The former Del Webb executive, UA graduate, and part-owner of the Phoenix Mercury deserves credit not just for taking a stand on tuition this year, but for being a consistent voice of common sense and fiscal discipline among the Regents. Last year she rebuked a bloated $185 million project to demolish Hopi lodge and build two new dorms on South Sixth (the same one that almost became an eminent domain dispute), pointing out that private firms and a pinch of modesty could have finished the project for half the price. Ultimately, she was steamrolled by her colleagues and cast the only vote against the plan, but her ruckus did force UA to cut the project’s budget a bit and keep the drab but functional Hopi Lodge for one more year.

Mariucci’s vote yesterday shows that she’s not just a friend of the citizens who fund higher education in Arizona with their tax dollars, but of the students who pay for it from their pocketbooks. It’s a fresh change for a body that often turns into a Supreme Soviet-grade rubber stamp come time to set tuition. And it looks like she’ll keep the common sense coming: according to the Star article, “she hopes to see the cost of maintaining a high-level research institution increasingly borne by the students who directly benefit from it and not necessarily by every student who attends the UA.”

With any luck, Shelton will get the message and make the UA Transformation plan a genuine attempt to minimize costs and come up with new funding models rather than a vapid exercise in memo-shuffling. But for now, our President is in shock and awe mode, threatening job losses and canceled classes without a deus ex machina influx of cash.

On balance, the Regents’ reproach is a good thing, but the there is one significant downside the Board ought to fix. Now that the Regents have allowed ASU and NAU to hike tuition above $6,000, UA is the cheapest school in the state. That’s contrary to the three school system, in which Tempe Normal should be the behemoth churning out cheap degrees, NAU the little guy, and UA the university focused on research and educational excellence. Under the post-meeting prices, that system is backwards. But that’s a minor problem, compared with the major benefits of relief for students and a kick in the pants for Shelton.

Here’s hoping Mariucci continues to bear down.