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Cultural Curiosity

What constitutes an EMU or ASUO program? The 'Clark Conversations' seek the answers.

By Tim Dreier

Funding of campus programs is always a tenuous issue. How our incidental fees are spent, by whom and for what purpose are questions that every student wants answered. The Clark Document is the primary piece of policy in determining how student incidental fees are allocated. The Clark Document, however, is sometimes open to interpretation. Currently, a panel comprised of staff members Dusty Miller, Gregg Lobisser, Anne Leavitt, and Dave Hubin, ASUO President Jay Breslow, ASUO Senate President Peter Watts, ASUO Senate Member Andrew Eliot, PFC Chair Mary Elizabeth Madden, EMU Board Chair Christa Shively. The talks, being called "Clark Conversations," center on defining the difference between ASUO and EMU programs in order to make a recommendation to University President Dave Frohnmeyer as to which programs should go through the EMU for funding and which should go through the PFC and ASUO.

The programs that will be affected by the outcome of the Clark Conversations include the Craft Center, Outdoor Program, the Cultural Forum, and the Students Activities Resource Office (SARO). The panel was assembled as the result of an addendum to the Senate budget that would have had the Cultural Forum and SARO budget heard through the PFC instead of the EMU board.

The primary issue for the Cultural Forum and the other programs that will be affected by the Clark Conversations is their funding. Currently, the Cultural Forum is funded through the EMU. What this means is that the Cultural Forum submits its budget to the EMU budget committee which then makes a recommendation to the EMU Board. The EMU board then decides upon the entire EMU budget, which is then sent to the ASUO Senate. The Senate then makes a decision on the EMU budget, the PFC budget, and the Athletic Department Finance Committee budget. The budget is then sent to the ASUO Executive who forwards it to President Frohnmeyer. This hierarchy is the way in which all EMU programs get their funding.

This process is not all that different from the process that PFC programs go through, however a budget surplus in an EMU program is handled in a slightly different manner than a budget surplus from a PFC program. If a PFC program does not use all of its budget, the surplus is put into the ASUO over-realized fund, the monies from this fund are then distributed to other campus groups via proposals to the Senate or are carried over to the next year. However, if an EMU program has a budget surplus that money can be used to balance the entire EMU budget. According to the Director of Student Activities, Gregg Lobisser, "The EMU, first and foremost, has an obligation as a major unit on campus to balance its budget." This means that a surplus from the Cultural Forum or other program could be used to off set a loss in an area like The Buzz. Lobisser also said that the goal in the EMU was not to touch programming monies in Student Activities Programs like the Cultural forum "Although, we leave open the opportunity to touch budgets if the overall unit is in deficit."

Being a part of the EMU, the Cultural Forum runs the risk of having any budget surplus used to balance the EMU budget. The Cultural Forum, however, has an opportunity fund. This fund, according to Linda Dievendorf of the Cultural Forum, consists of surplus fund-raising dollars. "We don't put incidental fee money in there, but we put fund-raise dollars in there," Dievendorf said. Also according to Dievendorf, surplus money that has not gone into the opportunity fund has been used to pay of deficits in other areas of the EMU budget, "Sometimes [a surplus] goes to supplement the EMU's budget, and I know that happened two years ago. I think that year the loss was in the EMU food-service budget."

Two years ago, in the 1998-99 fiscal year, the Cultural Forum had a budget surplus of $28,089. While most of this was placed into the Cultural Forum's opportunity fund, the rest was used to supplement the EMU budget.

One possible outcome of the Clark Conversations is an end to the Cultural Forum's budget surplus being used in this way at all. Under the PFC even salaries savings, which have traditionally been the only part of a surplus to be used for supplementing the EMU's budget, would revert to the over-realized fund. This would mean that the surplus from the Cultural Forum would be mixed back in with all of the over-realized funds and distributed to programs through Senate requests or carried over to the next year.

Although their funding may change, none of the programs that will be affected by the outcome of the Clark Conversations have a representative on the board. "The Student Activities staff have been encouraging, very much, to have a program person represented," said Dievendorf. However, the committee has asked for written input from the programs staff and believes this to be appropriate. "We solicited from students and staff their recommendations about what are the characteristics of what are an ASUO program and what are the characteristics of an EMU program. The conversation is at the template level...it is more about what makes these programs ASUO or EMU programs," Lobisser said. Lobisser also said that anyone with input was welcome to provide feedback on program transfer. "We've tried to accommodate the desires to be a part of the conversation by soliciting feedback, but to have a conversations limits how large a group can be," said Lobisser.

Without a representative on the board, the programs that will be affected by the Clark Conversations have only tangential input into where they should fit in under the ASUO or EMU. Also, the talking points released after each meeting are vague and do not include everything that is gone over in the meetings. "Many of the topics we're addressing would probably raise passions among different people, so we've agreed as a group not to share all of our conversations," Lobisser said. Without a representative and without access to the entirety of the conversations going on in the meetings, the programs that will be affected must leave the decisions on their funding up to the committee. Fortunately, the Clark Conversations are being held between persons with many different perspectives on the issue at hand.

Tim Dreier, a freshman majoring in jounalism, is a staff writer for the Oregon Commentator.