This year and last, Student Union (SU) budgeting has caused panic in various SU Executive groups that has led to fast-growing Facebook groups like “Save WUTV” and “Save KWUR,” along with a general frenzy among the leaders of groups that will not be able to continue functioning with the funding allocated to them.

The current structure gives executive groups little time to react to their proposed budgets and a limited ability to engage SU about the money they need to operate. The current process is unfair to Wash. U.’s executive student groups, particularly when they have received budget cuts that will prevent them from continuing to operate, and they have few ways to discuss the decision.

For groups facing potentially fatal budget cuts, panic ensues after the group learns the amount of funding SU will likely ask treasury to approve. Each group realizes it has only a few days to rally students to convince SU that it is a group worth funding. Students then show up to the treasury meeting en masse where the groups’ final sums will be determined. Throughout the year, different groups can appeal for more funding for specific items, but all appeals for all executive groups come from a small fund that most groups estimate will be insufficient.

While several executive groups have expressed disappointment with their allocations and the slash in the appeals fund is particularly worrisome, perhaps the most frustrating problem with the current budgeting process is the lack of transparency.

“Transparency is one of [SU's] major problems. They can basically do whatever they want. We’re never really sure exactly what to do. Sometimes they inform us about what’s going on, sometimes not so much. And even though they give us brief reasons why they won’t fund things, they’re not sufficient,” junior Jeremy Kaufman, the treasurer of WUTV, said.

KWUR experienced a similar problem attempting to work with SU and only found out about the proposed allocation through an unoffical leak.

“It could’ve been that we didn’t find out, and come Tuesday we would have had no idea, and it would have basically been too late. Student Union did not contact us, and it is frustrating that there was no second round. We went in, we proposed our budget, and there was nothing like a ‘hey, we’re thinking about cutting this, could you guys explain it more?’ When we found out we were completely surprised,” senior Michael Sandler, the former General Manager of KWUR, said.

The time crunch makes it virtually impossible for student groups to organize an effective response to the treasury decisions.

Groups find the future of their group in complete jeopardy or significantly altered, and they have only a few days to mount an effort to convince treasury that their group is worth funding.

Mr. Wash. U. believes that there was a misconception about their group that caused treasury to believe it was only about the 16 Mr. Wash. U. candidates and not about getting students involved in a greater St. Louis community service organizations. Because groups have no indication of how treasury is receiving their interview, they lack the ability to offer more explanation for items treasury may be confused about, and when their final number comes out, it’s incredibly difficult to get changes made.

“When I went through the interview, there was no mention whatsoever that [treasury] was going to change anything. As far as getting something presented eloquently to treasury, it’s going to be very difficult. I think I’m more frustrated with the fact that no help was offered at all. We don’t know what to do, so the best thing that we can do is try to be there [at the treasury meeting Tuesday],” Clint Morgan, treasurer of Mr. Wash. U., said.

Citing potential confusion and the possibility that numbers might change, SU denies the student body access to its preliminary budgeting information.

The money that SU will allocate to different groups comes from Wash. U. students, and students deserve to be included in the process of creating budgets. Including students means informing them about what treasury is thinking so students know whether they should contact SU to express their opinions.

Instead, students only have the ability to become involved in the budgeting process after it is completed, unless they are involved in the specific student groups whose budget is decided. Through its secrecy, SU has effectively crippled the student body’s ability to have a say in the use of its money.

Yewande Alimi, SU Vice President of Finance, explained that publishing the working SU budget would be irresponsible because it had not yet been finalized and “anything can change between now and Wednesday night when [the budget is] finalized.”

While Alimi is correct that budgeting changes can continue to be made, the process of creating changes should be one guided by the student body. And while students are allowed to have input in the final treasury meeting, the fact that the budget was kept secret before the meeting means that interested students don’t know whether this meeting, during the busiest time of the semester, is a meeting they need to attend.

Moreover, because Student Union gives student groups so little time to react to their proposed budgets and only cursory information about the reasoning behind these decisions, groups do not have the ability to effectively organize their responses.

The rushed decisions made by Student Union at the end of the semester have significant impacts on the student groups affected by those decisions. Both KWUR and WUTV expressed that the proposed allocations given by Student Union would undermine their abilities to operate, particularly if the trend of cutting the budget continues into the future.

“I don’t think we ask for special treatment. I think we ask for what we need. SU likes to apply blanket policies to groups, and this applies to all the bigger executive groups, not just KWUR, but when you look at those rules within the context of a specific group, the rules are just funny and don’t make sense,” KWUR General Manager Dylan Suher said.

At Student Life, we agree with the sentiment these groups have expressed.

We understand that the members of Student Union are students who have finals and lives and therefore do not have the time to be a perfectly efficient executive body, but the impact of cutting budgets for significant student groups is great enough that SU needs to find a way to be more accessible to the student groups it funds.

The current SU executives ran on a platform of making Student Union more approachable, but during the part of their tenure that will affect many students the most, SU has failed to understand the needs of the students or allow them full participation regarding budgeting.

This year’s SU executive board was supposed to be defined by putting the “you” back into the Student Union, but it has started its tenure by shutting the students out. We demand that SU find a way to let us back in.

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