The ASFLC: Budget Approvals for RSO II’s and III’s

Story by CJ Calvert Photo by Jarred Green

The Associated Students of Fort Lewis College met on Wednesday to discuss the budgets for Registered Student Organizations that are level II and level III.

The discussion topic about the RSO budgets, approved by the Financial Allocation Board, was presented by senator and chair of student services Ian Fullinwider.

“How FAB made this decision was by looking at the amount that was requested — the amount of money that we had — which was projected to be over the total amount being requested,” he said.

FAB distributed the amounts evenly based on how much of the total budget each RSO was requesting across all of the respective organizations, he said.

“We the looked at how many mandatory meetings they had missed and how many minutes they had failed to submit to the FAB director,” he said.

Each RSO was cut one percent of action that they had failed to perform, he said.

Student Union Productions was cut one percent. The Independent was cut two percent and Club del Centro was cut four percent, senator and chair of public relations, Jordyn Abrams said.

Wanbli Ota was put on probation and lost half of their funding, student body president Connor Cafferty said.

Wanbli Ota is the RSO that hosts the Hozhoni Days powwow and pageant every year.

“The campus community will suffer for their failure to uphold their requirements,” Cafferty said.

The RSO only attended two of the mandatory meetings, FAB director Lauren Smith said.

FAB also does not require the Environmental Center to go to the mandatory meetings because they are an RSO III and FAB considers them done with all requirements, she said.

The EC was approved for 20,000 dollars and not the 32,755 dollars they asked for based off of what they were given last year, she said.

The remainder of the budget to give to RSO II’s and III’s will be used for RSO I’s travel and event grants, Fullinwider said.

No matter what the ASFLC decides, no budgets are finalized until the fall census date, director of the Leadership Center Mark Mastalski said.

The budgets are based on predictions and assumptions, but ultimately, if our predictions on enrollment and revenue are correct, then these budgets will be approved as they are, he said.