Student Senate’s budget is true and accurate to the best of its treasurer’s knowledge.
But sometimes mistakes happen.
Last year’s Senate Treasurer Evan Ecos mistakenly withdrew more than $5,000 — about 10 percent of the organization’s funds — from senate’s budget instead of the Student Appropriations Committee’s fund.
When he noticed at the start of his term, current Senate Treasurer Austin LaForest quickly corrected the error.
In the 2012-13 school year, senate spent more than $50,000 — more than any other year, Ecos said. About $20,000 of the funds were from the general fee.
The remaining more than $30,000 came from other sources, including external event funding through partnerships with other campus groups and events.
There are some restrictions as to where senate money can go, with a constitutional mandate of at least five percent but no more than 15 percent of senate’s anticipated budget going to senate-based initiatives.
Typically, transactions are approved by senate’s Committee on the Budget and signed off by the Student Affairs office.
The senate treasurer also has access to about 12 percent of the budget to spend as he or she sees fit without having to receive approval from the chair of the Committee on the Budget, LaForest said.
“It is left up … to the treasurer how to spend those (funds). Typically those were just small items … (such as) office supplies,” Ecos said.
The anticipated budget for the school year is based solely on the general fee money, as a worst-case scenario, though funds usually succeeded this number due to partnerships, donations and leftover funds, Ecos said.
“The point of the students’ money isn’t necessarily to sit in an account and not be used,” he said. “ … The best thing you can do with student money is use it for students.”
Some initiates partly funded by senate include Take Back the Night, Athens Beautification Day and Pride Week.
“I really stressed for individuals to partner with other organizations … I think that is how to best make limited resources go further,” Ecos said.
T-shirts were one of senate’s advertising mechanisms and contributed to more than 13 percent of senate spending, though students were required to pay for the shirts, Ecos said.
“We always made the money back (on T-shirts), but it was too much of a hassle,” he said, encouraging current treasurer LaForest to avoid the task.
Speakers for senate-sponsored events were also among the organization’s costliest activities, though transfers to the Ohio University purchasing card, which is used for senate purchases to eliminate the reimbursement process, were the top spender.
Reimbursements for senate supplies such as nametags, pizza and hot chocolate also made up a significant portion of the budget, though Ecos said not all money spent on senate was recorded.
“There were times where other members of senate and myself … did not ask for reimbursements because we thought it wasn’t important enough,” he said.
However, some regulations come with reimbursements, said Joyce Skinner accounting assistant for the Office of the Bursar who oversees student organizations’ funds.
“There are rules to abide (by) and if they don’t follow the rules I tell them what it is and they either get it fixed or they (don’t get the money),” Skinner said.
Some of those rules include not reimbursing purchases of alcohol, firearms or tobacco, though Skinner said she has not had a problem with senate.
Skinner is not the only university employee who works closely with senate; OU’s
Event Services frequently collaborates with the body in planning senate functions.
As a student organization, senate receives a significant discount on fees associated with using OU facilities — 25 percent of what external organizations pay, said Dustin Kilgour, executive director of Baker University Center and Event Services.
All senate spending, along with every other student organization’s budget, can be found online via the Bursar’s webpage.
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