Oregon daily emerald., May 30, 1973, Page 8, Image 8

-Commentary
Your money: the IFC budget
By Randy Shilts
A million dollar budget to be decided
between five people of extraordinarily
diverse backgrounds and philosophies
cannot be a blue-print for Utopia, a
paragon of perfection. It can only be
what those five people can argue,
compromise and decide among
themselves with a resolution that can
only be judged in terms of what’s fair
for the entire student population af
fected.
The Incidental Fee Committee was
given an Executive recommendation
that lacked social conscience, fiscal
responsibility and a fair evaluation of
what was best for all students. It
recommended Day-care being cut off
entirely and increases in the Athletic
Department and EMU which were to be
made at the expense of ASUO services
and programs. After scores of hours of
hearings, debates and research the
Incidental Fee Committee has whittled
the $1,234,104 in requests from 57
agencies into a proposed incidental fee
budget of approximately $980,000 with a
projected fee increase of about $2.50 a
term. We have cut all ASUO salaries
that were not essential to the running of
the programs and have funded only
organizations that we felt best served
the needs of the students. However it is
impossible, in my view, to increase the
student union by 50 per cent without
having a fee increase to pay for it. This
is what the increase essentially boils
down to. I consider this to be a fair
budget. With the exception of the A.D.,
EMU and Day-care, it generally
represents a consensus decision by the
committee.
As an IFC member and IFC Chairer I
do not feel I can propose this budget
without making an effort to explain its
rationale to the students. Please read
on and see what your money is going to.
I see day-care as the most important
issue that faced the Committee. I was
elected with day-care as one of my top
priorities. $15,000 was allocated to the
day-center. ASUO will also be working
with the Day-care center and the Ad
ministration so that in the future the
V
University will pay for day-care and it
will be made available to the maximum
number of students.
The IFC voted to fund the Athletic
Department at $135,000 by a 3-2 vote.
This is the lowest possible figure we can
fund the AD—without President’s
approval and a $15,000 decrease from
the Executive recommendation. I
support the decrease not out of hostility
towards athletics but out of the feeling
that the $15,000 could better be spent
elsewhere in this tight fiscal year.
Negotiations will be carried out on this
contract to try to get student concerts in
Mac Court.
The decision that caused the greatest
controversy in the Committee con
cerned the EMU budget. The new EMU
facility, being opened this December,
will increase the student union floor
space by over 50 per cent and offer
many new services to students. EMU
Director Dick Reynolds requested an
additional $114,494 to pay for the new
equipment, personnel and expenses of
the new addition as well as an 11 per
cent operating payroll expense in
crease, a 6 per cent increase in
classified wages and a possible 6 per
cent increase in academic salaries.
Mano Hernandez, after reviewing the
budget, thought that over $100,000 could
be cut from his request and that Mr.
Reynolds was not being honest with the
Committee. Mr. Reynolds insisted that
only $15,000 could be cut and this only
with shorter union hours. The IFC spent
three hours with Mr. Reynolds with
Mano’s estimations of possible budget
errors being showed (in my opinion) as
inaccurate.
A five hour debate raged between
committee members with Mano and
Gloria Gonzalez supporting drastic cuts
(which in my estimation could not be
justified), Jeff Jefferson supporting
giving the whole EMU budget request
(less the $15,000 off-housing) and all
three threatening to walk out of the
committee hearings if their points of
view did not prevail. With this
deadlock, Gail Hoffnagle and I worked
towards a compromise solution in
which the budget was reviewed by line
items and cut where cuts were deemed
responsible by the majority of the
committee. I feel that the massive cuts
would have had a disastrous effect on
the credibility of the entire budget and
that this compromise was the only
resolution to the drawn-out conflict.
The IFC allocation for the EMU is
about $488,000, a cut of approximately
$23,000 from the original request. Mr.
Hernandez has presented his side of the
story; he believes he is right—I believe
this compromise was right. In any
event the increase in the Incidental Fee
reflects, almost exclusively, the EMU
budget.
In response to Mano’s personal at
tack upon me, I can only say that he
was mistaken if he thought I had a
“date” waiting. The comment he
referred to was one made after the
solution had been reached and we were
nearing the end of our deliberations. It
was made in an effort to lighten the
mood of a committee that was tense
after seven hours of heated debate.
The IFC has called for an in
vestigation of all levels of the EMU. A
committee will be appointed to work on
increasing student control over the
EMU as well as stipulations that the
EMU buy only UFW or local lettuce and
a stipulation I will propose prohibiting
discrimination in the EMU em
ployment on the bsis of sexual orien
tation.
While many students seem to think
that the Incidental fee principally goes
to support minority student unions, I
must note that only 4 per cent ($39,000)
of this year’s budget has been allocated
for this purpose. It has often been
claimed that this money is used to
further the self-interets of the par
ticular group, i do not agree. The
minority unions make all university
students aware of the many life-styles
and forms of oppression in our society
and so work to increase the social
awareness of all students. The Han
dicapped Support Services—funded for
the first time this year—will not only
serve the handicapped student but
inform all students of the problems
handicapped people face in our society.
(Did you know 6 per cent of our society
is handicapped? Why aren’t they in
school? Did you know a handicapped
university student cannot take a foreign
language because Friendly Hall is
inaccessible to him?) To make sure
that the students would get the most for
their money, the IFC increased funding
in areas of programs—speakers, films
and cultural events to inform students
—and cut the less educational funds for
salaried positions. The new budget
represents a committee that was
keenly aware of minority issues —
since three of the members are from
minority groups — though our
allocations were made with the entire
student body in mind.
New programs funded by the IFC will
give students new services. The
University Theater productions will be
available to students next year at half
the price of general admission due to a
$7,000 ticket subsidy allocated by the
IFC. This has long been suggested so
that more students—who can’t afford
the current $2.50 and $3.50 tickets—can
see these plays.
Other services such as the Legal
Services (providing free lawyers to
students), the Cultural Forum,
ESCAPE, SEARCH, OSPIRG, the
Survival Center, Action Now, the Drug
Information Center and the ASUO
Housing office have been funded to
continue the spectrum of services
available now.
It would be impossible for me or the
Committee to please everyone in the
student body with one budget. I have
worked to make a budget that would
fulfill what I promised the students in
my IFC campaign and what my con
science thought would be equitable for
the student body as a whole. Overall, I
believe the budget allocating your 1973
74 incidental fee money is solid and fair.
Note: Mr. Shilts is Chairer of the In
cidental Fee Committee and Oregon's
first openly gay public official.
Letters
thanks to everyone
I would like to thank everyone who
helped us at the ASUO Child Care and
Development Center in our efforts to
retain our funding and who believed in us
and in the necessity of the Child Care
Center. It has been a difficult struggle, but
we feel it has been worth it. Next year we
will be able to provide quality day care for
students who are in great need for the
service.
I especially want to thank those people
who signed our petitions, who circulated
petitions, who wrote letters in support, and
who offered their time and energy to our
cause. And of course we have deep
gratitude for those members of the In
cidental Fee Committee who believed in us
enough to vote for our funds. But a very
special thanks goes to Randy Shilts
(chairperson of the Incidental Fee
Committee) who never wavered in his
confidence in the rightness of our program
and who never stopped in his work on our
behalf.
Mary E. Keenan
Director
Screw ’em
RIGHT ON to John Andrews! Fuck
Daycare and all those other Communist
handout programs. The ASUO must get
out of this socialist rut it’s been in for the
last few years. What we need is an
aggressive investment program so we can
make some real bucks. First of all we
advocate giving all of our incidental fees to
the Athletic Department. With sucn a
large budget we could drop out of the Pac-8
CONGRESS
QUETPiaa
HEARINGS
IN
SESSION
m
& ■zr’A
'jOHN, ARE YOU SURE THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY?'
business and into something real big like
the NFL. Then we could all be getting big
kickbacks and dividends from CBS and
NBC. We ask you to consider youi
priorities. Who in the hell cares about the
people who can’t go to school because they
can’t afford babysitters, or those who need
extra programs in order for them to get a
degree. SCREW ’EM! All of us middle
class kids have the bucks and we didn’t
knock anybody up so we would have to get
married. Besides it’s so much more fun to
take off to a good game between the Ducks
and the Miami Dolphins.
Besides, the more money we save by
cutting the bleeding heart communistic
programs, the more bucks we can give to
deserving politicos like Greg Leo and his
fraternity brothers. We can take that
$20,000 from the Daycare program and
split it up among the executive and his
cronies in appreciation for the dynamic
leadership they have shown so far. God
Bless the ASUO and God Bless each and
every one of our overpaid ASUO officials
and especially the Athletic Department.
Heil Leo!
Heil Jefferson!
Heil Andrews!
Ross M. Lienhart
self-appointed Dictator and
Director of Heathens for the
Eradications of Stupidity
Keith W. Parrish
chairman of the committee to
recall Leo-Barnett