Southeast Missouri State University student publication

SGA members decide how to spend more than $800,000 of student fees

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The Southeast Missouri State University Student Government Association gets more than $800,000 in funding from general fees each year and uses it in a variety of ways.

General fees are $33.70 per credit hour that all students pay. They are approved by SGA and cover specific university cost, including the Student Recreation Center and the speaker series, as well as SGA's budget.

SGA gets a portion of the general fees that equal to $24.30 per student per semester if the student takes 15 credit hours. The rest of the SGA budget comes from rollover from the previous year. The SGA budget is broken up into four main accounts, according to SGA Treasurer Tyler Sayer.

"The first one is our executive account," Sayer said. "That [is the executive board's] money to spend to get things done, but it's also stuff we have to pay every year."

That account is $102,000 of SGA's budget, with its greatest expense being the salary of Dale Chronister, an administrative assistant and half of the salary of Jim Essner, SGA's business analyst.

That account also pays for stipends for the executive board members, shirts, office supplies and costs for the Dinner with the Deans, ice cream social, end of the year banquet and the Power of Women Luncheon.

"The [second] is the student organization's account, and that is the one that I am in charge of with funding board," Sayer said. "Student organizations that wish to receive money will turn in an application, and they will go to funding board. We'll talk to them about what it is they're trying to do. For the student organization account, it's always an event, like a special event, maybe an educational thing, a guest speaker, stuff like that. We'll talk to them in the funding board and decide how much money they'll get."

This accounts for $30,000 of SGA's budget for the 2015 fiscal year, with an additional $16,500 going to club sports.

"We also have a discretionary account [which amounts for $34,000 of the budget] and that goes through the executive board," Sayer said. "It's called the discretionary account because it is at the discretion of the [executive] board. Historically people tend to request going to conferences with that or competitions. If someone sees how it would benefit themselves or the university, then we'll talk about sending them on that."

Also included in the SGA budget is $27,000 in funding for WINGS shuttles, $13,500 to fund homecoming and $121,500 to fund the Student Activities Council.

"We also fund SAC, which is a huge chunk of our budget because people know about student government but people love SAC because they put together all those crazy events," Sayer said. "So it's important that we make sure they get all the money they need to put on all these events every single year."

The largest and most flexible account is the carry forward account, which consists of all the money not allocated to another account. For this year, it amounts for $417,723.71, more than half of the budget.

Sayer explained that this account is used for things that they do not have to fund every year, including special projects, one-time purchases or things that do not need to be replaced every year like computers.

Things that have been funded from this account range from free smoke alarms given out at the beginning of the year, which cost $1,000, the new shuttle tracker displays which costs $35,000, to the Involvement Ambassador Program, which costs $25,000.

Sayer said that when it comes to what SGA funds, "As long as it's bettering the student experience, we want to do it."

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