The Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG) has announced major cuts to their scholarships and academic initiative fund.
The cuts come in light of the Student Choice Initiative (SCI) which affected CASG less than they originally predicted, according to CASG vice-president (operations) Matthew Gagne who put the budget together. Only 15 per cent of students opted out of paying CASG’s annual levy fee of $1.60, instead of the 25 per cent opt-out rate the group previously estimated, Gagne said.
Both funds were slashed nearly in half in a budget presented at the first meeting of the 2019-20 school year on Oct. 4.
“Despite cutting other areas, our scholarship fund and our academic initiative fund did get hit quite hard,” he added.
The academic initiative fund, which is budgeted at $3,000 this year—$4,000 less than in 2018-19—provides funding to accredited academic clubs and societies at Carleton to help them host events.
The CASG scholarship fund also took a budgeting hit, decreasing by $3,000 from 2018-19, for a total scholarship fund of $4,000 for the 2019-20 academic year. The scholarship fund had offered 15 scholarships relating to academics and community involvement in previous years, ranging in value from $500 to $1,000. It’s not clear how many scholarships will be offered this year.
“I hated having to cut that much out of the initiative fund and our scholarship fund,” Gagne said. “That’s the two things we’re really known for apart from pancakes.”
Gagne was referring to the CASG Study Snacks program which offers snacks to students during exams and midterms, which did not see a budget decrease from last year—staying at $1,000.
Gagne added CASG had less money to start with this year because last year’s CASG council left them less than half of the usual leftover funds, which he said “didn’t help.”
“I don’t know how they had so much of an incoming budget starting the 2018-19 year,” he said. “They went really under budget in 2017-18 I guess, but rather than having almost $12,500 coming in [from] 2018-19, [this year] we only had $5,000.”
In an effort to reduce cuts to the scholarship and academic initiative fund, Gagne said he reduced the general meeting refreshments from $1,200 to $600.
“We cut general meeting refreshments quite a bit because of the Student Choice Initiative,” Gagne said. “We cut things that weren’t exactly necessary so we didn’t have to hit things like our scholarship fund … and we cut that by over half.”
Multiple council members voiced concerns over the proposed budget.
“Why did you cut the scholarships before cutting your honourariums?” asked CASG councillor Rachel Bailak.
Each CASG executive is awarded a $2,000 honourarium, while each coordinator is awarded a $250 honourarium.
“The issue is we can’t do anything without council, so that is where we have to look into, so we are going to propose some changes in the coming meeting,” replied Tyler Boswell CASG vice-president (internal).
Boswell did not make any specific proposals about cutting honourariums, but he added the executives will bring changes to financial policies, not the budget, at the next council meeting.
“I’m sorry but I think that most of us on student societies work as volunteers, and on our time and our own money,” Bailak said in response. “I think it’s ridiculous that we’re cutting funding to students before cutting the funding for ourselves.”
Alessandro Gianna, Faculty of Public Affairs (FPA) coordinator, asked if he would be able to put his $250 share of the coordinator honourarium towards the scholarship fund.
Boswell said the CASG executives would look into the group’s bylaws and policies in order to sort out logistics, but would get back to Gianna’s proposal at the next council meeting.
Council was split, with only 20 council members voting in favour of passing the budget, 13 voting against, and two members in abstention. The budget passed with a majority.
Feature image by Jasdeep Kaur Lally.
