By Megan Kelly
Staff Writer
Student Government held its weekly meeting on Wednesday, April 12, which took place at the New Jersey State House in Trenton, N.J., rather than on campus.
SG approved the Student Finance Board budget for the 2017-18 year, titled “FY2018.” The most important change to the budget is the increase in the staffing budget because of changes proposed by Amy Hecht, the vice president of Student Affairs.
The budget will now expand to include a director of Diversity and Inclusion, so it will increase from $60,000 to $158,000. This affects the funds that can be allocated to various student organizations.
Some aspects of the budget, such as funds allocated for club sports, stayed the same, but some budgets were cut down, such as the budget for the Loop Bus, which is decreasing from $30,000 to $20,000, as efforts will be made to make the loop bus run more efficiently, such as cutting down on rides.
The student employee wages will be decreasing overall and any student making more than $4,000 will receive an 8 percent wage decrease.
“We currently pay $120,000 towards student employee wages, so that includes the wages for (College Union Board), SFB as well as SG. Our wages for the next year are going to be be reduced slightly,” said Ziyi Wang, SFB’s operations director and a junior finance major.
The budget for club equipment, such as whiteboards, will decrease and SFB will focus on clubs that already have equipment, but is no longer functioning properly rather than buying completely new equipment that does not need replacing.
“We support organizations who want to purchase new equipment, so for example, this year, SG got a new whiteboard, Student Finance Board upgraded the equipment that our program director rents out. … We’re decreasing the amount (of money) that student organizations can request for equipment,” Wang said.
SFB also currently contributes about $800 per issue used toward printing The Signal, but plans to reduce that amount to around $400 per issue. SFB will also be cutting $2,000 from the funds allocated to intramural sports.
“The result of this cut (is that) individual students will have to pay more in order to play sports like bowling and golf,” Wang said.
SG and CUB are the groups that cost SFB the most money, so SFB has decided the groups will be given their base budget for next year in advance. This will help SG and SFB plan their events more efficiently and help reduce costs, according to Wang.
