The Daily Campus

Issue date: 5/1/08 Section: Commentary

Penny-pinching and watching one's savings closely are sound fiscal moves in the current state of the sagging economy. Cutting costs here and there is a good way to make sure one's financial future is secure for years to come. But it seems as though USG has taken this sound advice, great for struggling individuals and families, and applied it on a grand scale despite a burgeoning surplus being saved for no conceivable reason.

USG is the organization through which student groups must apply for funding for any manner of activities they seek to subsidize. From bus transportation for field trips, to speaker fees for a guest lecturer, to money for the games played by the UConn Video Game Organization - all of these requests must be funded through USG. Though this is, or should be, one of the most readily and freely available aspects of the student government, USG has failed its constituency, by failing to allocate $57,000 of the funds it was appropriated at the start of the year.

But that is not the end of the financial high times USG currently enjoys. Because of a sloppy and terribly outdated accounting system, USG leaders have recently learned that the organization's coffers contain, inexplicably, $115,000 that the organization did not know it had. Because of underutilization of current funding, its already-sizable bank account and the discovery of this hefty hidden sum, USG is operating at a major surplus. Yet, it still can't bring itself to fund worthy student groups, using a web of convoluted rules to disallow them. Consider the following cases:

The Women's Ski Team was initially denied over $8,000 to train at Stratton Mountain over winter break for 21 days because, vaguely enough, it was seen as too personal a use of the money.

EcoHusky could not use $350 to place advertisements in The Daily Campus for a 5k charity road race, because the race charged money for participation, which would have later been given to charity.

The UConn Finance Society was denied $1,200 for a group trip to tour Wall Street and the Museum of American Financial History.

There are plenty more instances where students needing money for worthy causes were denied by the penny-pinchers at USG, yet the money sits idle in the university's business office accounts, waiting for a more important expenditure that may never come - save the USG office Xbox needing repairs.

It seems like USG is financially set as an organization and it has recently withdrawn a request for a fee increase of $10 - which would have brought USG fees to $80-per-student. But with all the extra loot floating around, come on USG, it is time to give a little more back.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools