AS budget graphic. Soleil de Zwart // AS Review
By Stella Harvey
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to destabilize local economies, many state-funded institutions are bracing for budget cuts. Western is not immune to these challenges. According to Associated Students Business Director Nate Jo, Western asked all offices and organizations who receive funds from Western’s tuition and fees to prepare for a 5-10% decrease in enrollment, and therefore, in funding.
Over the last year, Jo said the Finance Council has been working on the AS Fiscal Year 2021 Budget. Now, the AS must project how it will operate if it loses funding. To make the situation more complicated, Nicole Ballard, current AS senator for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and member of the AS Finance Council, said the AS is currently working with very little information.
“This has definitely been an adjustment. Trying to figure out how we can cut fees, but also make sure that we’re providing resources and student employment, it’s definitely been like a balancing game,” Ballard said.
In a May 12 campus advisory, Western announced fall quarter will have a mixture of in-person and remote classes. In order for professors to plan their courses accordingly, Western postponed fall registration to sometime in June. Until students register for fall quarter classes, Western will not know how much, or even if, there is a decrease in enrollment. With this in mind, the Finance Council has taken another look at the budget to prepare for a potential loss of funds, without knowing what is coming down the line, Jo said.
“It’s really a weird place because normally the previous year’s leadership passes the final budget for the next year for the AS to operate on, but now we’re saying, well, we don’t really know what the revenue is going to be,” Jo said.
Jo presented the Finance Council’s 2021 Budget twice to the board and twice to the senate in May. Jo went over the Executive Summary of the budget and presented estimates of how much the AS deficit could grow if there is a 5% to 10% drop in enrollment.
During these meetings, the senate and board went over three recommendations of how the AS could potentially reduce the deficit. Jo said they presented these recommendations after working with Raquel Vigil, program advisor for the AS Business Office, and Eric Alexander, director of the Viking Union. During the senate meeting on May 26 and the board meeting on May 27, both bodies passed the budget with these recommendations.
The board and senate’s first recommendation to reduce the deficit involves moving funds that were previously allocated to specific offices for events and programming back to the AS general fund. Since Western will be encouraging students to social distance and stay home when they can, the AS expects to cancel or scale down many events.
Jo said in the absence of these in-person events, these funds will be freed up, and can go towards offsetting the deficit. While the AS may still be able to offer virtual programming and small events, Ballard said it makes sense to re-distribute funds from cancelled events.
If moving funds back to the AS general fund is not enough to lower the deficit, the board and senate also recommended implementing a temporary freeze on the AS wage policy. The AS wage policy determines the pay raise student employees receive each year. No wages would be cut if the AS freezes the policy, but minimum wage employees would receive a raise in order to meet Washington State’s minimum wage requirements.
If neither suggestion is able to reduce the deficit, the board and senate also recommended using a portion of the AS operating reserve. The board and senate said this is their last-resort suggestion since the AS already used part of the reserve fund when it voted to reduce student fees for spring quarter. While the operating reserves are meant for sudden catastrophic loss of revenue, Ballard said depleting the reserves more would put the future of the AS in jeopardy.
“I don’t know what the status of reserves are going to look like at the end of the year because we use so much in the spring to be able to lower the [services and activities] fee,” Jo said.
Jo and Ballard said as more information comes in, it will be easier to plan for the future. Jo said they hope that brainstorming solutions now will help next year’s Finance Council implement solutions quickly.
“At the beginning of this spring we were kind of flying blind. We were just hit with this and we had to make a really quick decision,” Jo said. “Now we know months in advance that there are going to be some tough decisions that have to be made, so I think even those three clear recommendations serve as a really good foundation to direct a new Finance Council.”
Rather than having a fixed budget, Jo said next year the AS leadership will need to make budgetary decisions every quarter. AS Board and Student Senate Program Advisor Leti Romo said in an email that she hopes student representatives engage in difficult conversations with care and attention to Western’s community.
“I hope the elected officials are able to navigate this difficult conversation with the student needs at core,” Romo said in an email. “I also hope that they are able to truly embody shared governance and be able to engage in critical conversations.”
While making budgetary decisions next year, Jo said they plan to prioritize keeping students employed.
“We’re an organization by students for students, and students will always be our number one priority,” Jo said.
Looking at the long-term effects the Finance Council, board and senate’s decisions will have will also be important, Jo said.
“I think it’s always important to look at the bigger context. Where we are now, we have a [Multicultural Center], we have these programs because of things that happened in the past, some of which took decades,” Jo said. “We really need to take a long term approach to saying like, we don’t need to panic … We can prioritize the core services that are actually making a difference in students’ lives every day.”