Debate among Student Assembly members at their general meetings this term has brought under scrutiny the problem of how the Assembly allocates its approximately $39,000 budget.
Tuesday night the Assembly allocated $3,000 to help fund campus publications and last week voted to put $5,000 toward the "Women, Leadership and Activism" symposium.
So far the Assembly has either spent or earmarked about 75 percent of its budget, leaving a balance of approximately $9,500 for the rest of the fiscal year.
The Assembly has already paid for the Course Guide and the Student Advantage Card and will spend money to publish its monthly newsletter and to help sponsor a meeting of the Ivy Council later this term at Dartmouth.
But Assembly President Danielle Moore '95 says the amount left should be sufficient for the duration of the year.
Assembly Treasurer Scott Rowekamp '97 agreed. "I don't really see any long range expenditures," he said. "Basically we've done most of our big projects for the year."
The budget allocations, however, have not come without fierce debate.
After one-and-one-half hours of debate at last week's meeting, the Assembly approved funding for its symposium.
"I did vote against the student symposium," Rowekamp said, "Not because I didn't think it was a worthy cause but because it was just $5,000, and it didn't say exactly where the $5,000 dollars was going. I wanted to know exactly where our money was going so we could be held accountable for the people who elected us."
But Moore stressed the intellectual benefits of the program.
She said she feels the symposium and all other programs sponsored by the Assembly are "quality student services" that benefit the community. For instance, she said the speaker series was the brainchild of the Assembly and was "initiated by students and involves students."
Moore said she would like to investigate other topics on campus in addition to the ones covered in the women's symposium to see if more programming ideas stem from them.
The Assembly's budget is accountable to the Undergraduate Finance Committee, which determines how the $35 activity fee each student pays is distributed.
This year the UFC reduced the Assembly's budget by about $9,000 while increasing the amounts given to the Class Councils.
"The reason the budget was cut this year to $30,000 was because last year they had a surplus of $9,000," said Rowekamp. Last year's $9,000 surplus was added to this year's budget, bringing the total amount to $39,000.
Last year the Programming Board received $214,320, nearly one-half of the money collected from the student activity fee.
Rowecamp said a majority of the General Assembly must vote to approve "basically anything other than administrative costs."
"Publications like the Course Guide and Off-Campus Dining Guide, however, are paid by the Assembly because it is very much a precedent that the Assembly will pay for these items," Rowekamp said.
