STAFF EDIT: Spotting a budget problem

These days, it is easy for anyone to blame financial shortcomings on the poor economy. And often that is exactly the case because we are in a recession, and it is expected that budgets are going to be cut. However, the fact that Boston University’s Allocations Board recently used the excuse ‘the current state of the economy’ to explain why the On-the-Spot budget has suddenly been depleted is not acceptable.

The fact that our economy is struggling right now isn’t a new revelation. The media has been focused on the dire economic situation since September. The AB should have seen this coming. Clearly, there was some serious mismanagement of the OTS budget if all the money is gone when BU is only five weeks into the new semester.

In President Robert Brown’s Jan. 12 letter to faculty discussing the budget crisis, he mentions that BU will be ‘reducing subsidies for activities and services that are not essential to our core mission and our Strategic Plan’. Of course, some OTS requests are not going to have any relevance to the Strategic Plan, but with no money in the OTS budget, groups that need money immediately for events that are right in line with the core mission of the university are going to be denied funding.

Each year, students pay $510 for their undergraduate student fee, which makes up the Allocation Board budget. This is $22 more than the undergraduate student fee for the 2007-08 school year. It may not seem like a huge increase compared to the 4.5 percent jump in the price of tuition last year, but with almost 17,000 undergraduates, that is an increase of nearly $374,000.

It must be explained to students exactly why the AB has run out of money for the OTS budget so quickly, despite the fact they are paying more than ever for their undergraduate student fee. It’s our money, and we deserve to know where it’s going.