MSA to vote on cutting funding to ASUM
Published Jan. 29, 2008
The Missouri Students Association Senate will vote Wednesday on whether MU will cut its contribution to the Associated Students of the University of Missouri, an organization that lobbies on behalf of UM system students.
The MSA Student Fee Review Committee voted unanimously to cut the student fee collected for ASUM, sending the recommendation to the MSA Senate. The fee cut also has to be approved by the UM system Board of Curators, the university’s governing board.
The legislation would trim allocations to the central budget of ASUM because the processes used to pay for internships within the organization is changing, according to the bill.
ASUM was created by MSA in 1975 as a means to represent students from each UM campus and to lobby on their behalf.
Until 2005, both the seats and the funding were proportionate to the student population on each campus, MSA Senate Speaker Jonathan Mays said. Columbia held more seats but also paid more money.
Three years ago, in an effort to balance representation across each campus, the number of seats changed to three per campus, according to the bill.
The legislation is catching up ASUM’s financial structure to its organizational structure, Mays said.
MU now pays $30,000 into ASUM’s central budget of $39,000. UM-Kansas City, the Missouri University of Science and Technology and UM-St. Louis each pay $3,000, ASUM Executive Board Member Clint Birdsong said.
Part of this money is being spent on the legislative internship program for each campus. Each year, interns work in Jefferson City as student lobbyists, and this funding pays for travel expenses and fees involved with internships.
The bill would alter how these internships are paid for. Instead of the central budget paying for the internships for every campus, each campus budget would fund their own internships, Birdsong said.
MU contributions are funding $17,000 into other campus’ internships, Mays said.
With each campus budget funding its own internships, the central budget then requires less funding. The bill would require each campus to pay about $8,000 into the central budget, Mays said.
This would result in a $22,000 cut from MU’s contribution into the budget. Of this cut, $13,000 would be reallocated into the campus budget for MU internships in Jefferson City and $4,000 would help fund ASUM’s federal intern in Washington, D.C. The remaining $5,000 would be completely cut, Mays said.
The Board of Curators will have to determine if student fees will be reduced for MU students. This bill is a proposal for a way to reduce the fee, Mays said.
Mays and Birdsong joined ASUM Executive Board Member Traci Harr, ASUM Legislative Director Craig Stevenson, MSA President-elect Jim Kelley and MSA Vice President-elect Chelsea Johnson in signing the bill Friday afternoon.
Mays said he is unsure what the final legislation will look after discussion in Senate, but he hopes to have the Senate vote on the measure Wednesday.
“I think that we have enough of a consensus that the central budgets needs to be cut,” Mays said.
Vice Chancellor Cathy Scroggs has agreed with the proposal and is negotiating with administrators on other campuses, Mays said.