No one would argue with the fact that MSA does need a certain amount of money to fund its own internal operations. However, the majority of these student fees tend to be spent on MSA itself, and not on student groups or on programs that benefit students. The idea behind the MSA fee is that the majority of the money should be spent funding student groups and programs that benefit students. MSA's funding priorities, therefore need to be more focused in those areas.
In looking at the 1995-6 MSA External Budget, one finds that there are many examples of questionable funding decisions. One such example is the MSA External Relations Committee (ERC), chaired by Fiona Rose. During the 1994-5 academic year, the budget for this committee was $2,000. For this academic year, the budget has jumped to $7,000. According to the ERC budget, $2,328 of this was to be spent sending two students to each of three different conferences. The rest of the budget includes funding for vague items such as "grassroots organizing" (for a whopping total of $3,650.30) and dues to an organization known as NASHE, presumably a lobbying organization. As a matter of fact, the MSA budget requires ERC to spend at least $2,000 on lobbying purposes. While it is understandable that MSA should engage the services of a lobbying organization to represent student interests to the government, and maybe even understandable that two MSA members be sent to one conference of this organization in Washington, D.C., presumably to represent student interests to the Federal Government, it is not as easy to understand why MSA needs to send representatives to conferences in Iowa and Wisconsin. One item that is definitely hard to understand is the need to spend over $3,600 on "grassroots organizing" and "letter writing campaigns" to an unspecified group for an unspecified purpose. One would tend to wonder exactly how student interests were being served by such activities.
Another, even more interesting expenditure is the MSA Communications Committee's spending of $700.00 on refreshments and "subs/drinks" for its mass meetings. This is interesting because MSA refuses to spend our student fees to allow student group to purchase refreshments for their activities, but seems to have no qualms about spending our student fees on refreshments for their activities. MSA shows considerable lack of judgement in allowing a single committee to spend $700.00 on refreshments alone, which most certainly does not benefit the student population. Perhaps MSA needs to start following some of its own funding rules?
Another example of questionable spending on the part of MSA involves the budget for the Women's Issues Commission, an organization that had a budget of $50 for 1994-5 and submitted a $5,300 budget proposal. The request includes items for the establishment of a "National University Women's Association" (asking for a "minimum" of $3,000 to start) and a NOW (National Organization for Women) chapter on campus. Now while these may be admirable efforts, it is not necessarily the purview of MSA to establish independent organizations, such as NOW, which would arguably be an independent student organization and should be formed under MSA's rules. Another item asks for $2,000 for bimonthly women's forums, of unspecified format. In fact, the entire budget proposal, which asks for in excess of a 10,000 percent funding increase, was submitted in handwriting on a quarterÐsheet of looseÐleaf notebook paper, and failed, as all committee proposals did, to go into any sort of detail as to the activities the money would fund.
The majority of MSA's spending goes to funding internal MSA activities, rather than student programs. In addition, much of their spending is wasteful and of questionable merit. MSA needs to remember that first and foremost they exist to provide for programs that benefit students. Granted, funding for the Budget Priorities Committee (BPC), which funds student groups, has steadily increased, which is definitely a positive trend. However, this amount only represents 37 percent of the total budget for MSA. The remaining 63 percent needs to be spent more on student activities and less on funding MSA's own internal bureaucracy.