The Syracuse University Student Association held its last fiscal training class Sunday, in an attempt to streamline a complex budget system.

The 30-minute workshops were designed to better prepare student organizations for requesting funds in the upcoming budgeting process, said Jonathon Barnhart, chair of the Student Engagement Committee.

All 300 organizations recognized by SA were required to attend one of the classes. Lily Mei, SA’s comptroller, said there was a good turnout at the courses, but 50 to 70 groups didn’t attend.

Those who did not show up to any of the four classes will not be allowed to submit a request for funding to SA and won’t receive any money, she said.

‘The easier you make it for us, the easier it will be to get money,’ Barnhart told approximately 80 organization representatives Sunday.

Groups could also attend the same presentation on Saturday or on Feb. 21 and 22.

Andrea Rosko, a sophomore civil engineering major, attended Sunday’s class on behalf of SU’s chapter of Habitat for Humanity.

Rosko said the class was beneficial because she received the contact information for Mei and Barnhart. But besides that, the class was not very helpful, she said.

‘It could’ve been dealt with in a different way,’ she said. ‘I feel like all this information could have been shared with us in a different way so I didn’t have to waste my Saturday afternoon.’

In the past, SA offered optional courses like these but saw low attendance and poor participation, Barnhart said. When it came time to submit their budgets, the groups didn’t know what to do, he said.

‘They’d show up to our offices and ask questions, and it was never clear. We never quite had anything like this,’ Barnhart said about the new fiscal training classes. ‘We’ve tried to do similar things where we’d send an example budget to people over the Internet, but that didn’t always work.’

Groups would forget to submit one of the required forms or wouldn’t break down exactly where they wanted the money to go, he said. The Finance Board was less likely to grant funds to a group with a poorly submitted proposal, he said.

‘And because of that, we decided to put on this training to make sure we get people with solid budgets and actually give people an equal chance,’ he said. ‘Just because you have a sloppy budget shouldn’t mean you don’t get money.’

The organization representatives’ reactions to the classes were mixed. One representative of a group spent the duration of the talk Sunday text messaging. Others pulled out laptops and took down notes from the class.

Kimberly Lopez, who attended the training for her sorority, Omega Phi Beta, said the class will help her explain the funding process to alumni.

Overall, groups will have a better understanding of the process, Lopez said, but the fiscal training program could have lasted longer and gone into greater detail.

‘I still feel like we’re going to have to meet with them and ask them questions, because everyone’s situation is so different,’ she said. ‘We’re still going to reach out to them, because this was really short.’

The deadline to submit budget proposals is March 18 at 6 p.m., Mei said. The requests will include programming, conference or publication forms, contracts, descriptions of proposed events, a detailed budget, and quotes from businesses, she said.

Organizations will then attend a budget hearing, where they will describe in detail what they’ve requested. These are mandatory and if the hearings aren’t attended, Mei said, SA won’t consider the proposals further.

WERW radio and 20 Watts magazine, a music publication owned by WERW, were denied funding in April as two of 10 groups that missed their budget hearings with the Finance Board. Executives from both campus groups pointed to miscommunication between SA and the organizations as the reason for their absences.

SA collected around $2 million from student fees last year, she said. About $500,000 was made available to groups in the fall semester and approximately $800,000 was used in the spring, she said.

adbrow03@syr.edu

Published on March 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm