The Student Government Association is seeking a 19% increase in funding from this year’s student fees budget. The Student Senate voted in approval of their 2021 budget proposal at Wednesday’s meeting.

The student fees request, which includes the SGA general fund, student advocate and student funding, will request a total of $310,708.62. SGA will also request $44,500.00 for their Educational Opportunity Fund, doubling last year’s request. 

SGA Treasurer Colleen Ostermann was absent from Wednesday’s meeting, but left a statement that was read to senators.

“I look at the budget and I look at personal finances. You put money where it is most important. In your personal finances, there is necessary and unnecessary expenses,” the statement read. “As [Student Body President Kitrina Miller and SGA Advisor Gabriel Fonseca] and I have prepared the budget, we endeavoured to report and account for expenses that had previously been taken out of the association’s reserve funds. Although this adds to the overall expense of the budget, it more accurately reflects our current state of the association.”

The proposal sees increases in all the standing committees, Shocker Support Locker student salaries and advertising, election student salaries, the International Student Hardship Fund, the Dreamer Scholarship, the McKinney-Vento Scholarship, and the Hardship Fund. 

The proposal includes decreases in general student salaries, the SGA senate retreat, WSU inspire program, End of the Year Banquet, SGA events, all office expenses, and the International Student Scholarship.

“The goal in preparing the budget was to serve as a model of the student fees process. That is, to project to the best of our ability the expenses for the year and budget accordingly to that,” the statement continued. “As we did this, we found money that many of the budgets had previously laid out [that] were a little too high, and we were not spending the money that we were budgeted for.”

A new addition to the budget proposal is to have SGA assist in covering the assistant director’s salary. The assistant director is one of the two SGA advisors. The budget requests $24,500.00 to accommodate this addition.

Another new addition to the proposed budget is $14,000 of funding for a graduate assistantship of the Shocker Support Locker.