What is AS doing with your money?

It is the start of a new semester! You have picked and registered for your classes online and now you are at the payment page to finalize your decisions. You scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’re ready to hit submit when you notice that you have the option to pay an additional $7 to receive 2 Associated Students (AS) stickers. You think, $7, what could that go towards? The truth is, you’re not alone. Each semester tons of Cypress College students choose to pay an extra $7 for these 2 AS stickers without knowing what they go towards. So the question is, where does your money go?

Jennifer Kim, 20, a student at Cypress, purchased an AS sticker. She said she bought it because “It was really affordable,” and that the benefits “would be worth it.” However, she wasn’t completely sure on where the money went,“I’m not really sure [where the money goes], but I’m assuming it goes to the AS group and they set up events such as the ones in the beginning of the semester which provide students with free food.”

When asked if she was concerned where the money went, she said, “Honestly, $7 out of my pocket is not too much for me to be concerned about. As long as it’s for school functions and to benefit the students, I don’t mind. If I find out the money’s going to some shady cause, then I would not pay for it.  I think students should be given awareness of that.”

To find out where the money goes, we need to know more about AS. The Associated Students (AS) of Cypress College is an organization in charge of putting together events for the student body, student advocacy both at governance committees at Cypress as well as on the district level, funding different events and informing students about issues on campus.

AS is responsible for activities and events such as Welcome Back Week, Club Rush, Blood Drives and the Thanksgiving Food Drive amongst many others.

As we all know, hosting these kinds of events requires consistent funding. According to the AS website, funding comes from the AS benefit sticker, interest in a Bank of America CD account, campus ads on phones and ATM machines, a percentage of income from the student newspaper’s kiosks ads and through various fundraising ventures.

Although all of these sources are intended to gain income, the AS sticker is by far the most major source of income, generating $86,181 last year alone according to the 08-09 AS Sticker Budget.

Every year students have the option to purchase the $6 AS sticker for activity fees and an additional $1 sticker as a student representative fee. So what does this mean? According to Christine Macalma, vice president of AS fiscal affairs, the Associated Students “Propose a budget ahead of time, by looking at the budget for the current year and estimating the next year’s expenses.”

Last year, AS proposed that they would need $92,784 to conduct operations for that year. Based on that proposed budget, AS then decided upon how much they would charge for activity fees and consulted a variety of sources such as revenue from ATM fees to obtain the proposed budget.

AS then allocated this money into a wide array of different uses including $11,500 for supplies, $11,900 for clerical and secretarial expenses, $2,500 for the presidential scholarship and about $5,000 for AS travel expenses as evidenced by the AS sticker budget.

Supplies include all materials used in the Student Activities Center, clerical and secretarial expenses are wage expenses for employees and the presidential scholarship is a yearly scholarship awarded to students by AS.

Now what about travel? How does AS use their $5,000 allotted for travel? Well, according to Macalma, AS takes a trip to the Student Senate for California Community Colleges (SSCCC) every year. Last year AS traveled to San Jose to attend the conference; however, they also visited Sacramento that year to protest the increase in CC tuition fees, as well as going to San Diego for a retreat.

As the year came to a close, the actual amount that AS spent was only $57,746.87, that’s less than 2/3 of what they had initially proposed according to the AS sticker budget. This included a total of $6,612.70 spent on supplies, $6,425.75 for clerical and secretarial expenses, $0 for the presidential scholarship and a whopping $18,559 for travel expenses.

This means that the 3 trips to San Jose, Sacramento and San Diego, cost over 3 times what had initially been proposed. However, in their defense, Macalma says that when proposing the budget “It’s better to underestimate how much income we will receive than overestimate it and get less money than expected.”

Therefore, AS was able to spend that much on travel expenses and still give over $13,000 back to organizations on campus such as the Language Arts department, the Dental Hygiene Program and the Career Center at the end of the year.

Proposing a budget is a pretty big task for AS, let alone making sure it is an accurate estimate; therefore, rather than being a one-step process, getting the budget approved can better be described as a road with many stops on the way.

The budget begins in AS where the advisor as well as the new treasurer create it, allocate the money and finally approve it. It then moves to the AS council where they must approve it followed by the bursar’s office whom also must approve and finally ends in the hands of Diane Henry, dean of Student Activities.

Together, all of these people do their part to approve the budget and make sure student money is only taken as needed. So next time you reach deeper into your pockets for that $7, be informed and know what it goes to and help do your part for Cypress College. D

3 comments

An Influencial Cypress College Student

Thu Oct 29 2009 17:09

My concern is the AS spending on this whole "retreat" thing. AS takes a retreat on our money?? I provide funds to Associated Students to represent me, to represent MY school, to help better our college ... NOT TO TAKE A VACATION ON MY DIME. You want a vacation? Spend your own money! And use mine for what it's meant for! Until this changes I will be donating NO MORE MONEY to AS. Period. And I recommend others do the same if you care where your money is going in this recession!

concerned student

Mon Oct 26 2009 16:19

How are they supposed to talk about this year's budget if the school year is not even halfway done? The budget from last year does matter because if you follow the trend this is not first time this has occurred. There have been major discrepancies in AS budget and during a time where every penny counts maybe students should be informed about how much $7 from some 15,000 students can accumulate to.

u dont know what it is

Sun Oct 25 2009 02:07

I am very disappointed in the writers who wrote this article. They provided some misleading and inaccurate information. If you want to talk about this years budget, don't even mention about last years budget. It does not even matter to this year budget. Why would you use someone else's notes and combined with your note and stating that this is your piece of work...

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