GPSO approves budget, addresses funding cuts

The IU Graduate and Professional Student Organization decided at its general assembly meeting Friday to keep the budget as close to last year’s as possible despite cuts in University funds.  

In previous years, the University allocated $10,000 for academic support to GPSO, the student government for graduate students on campus.
 
This year funding was cut to $6,000 for reasons unknown to GPSO, treasurer Ron Arruejo said.

However, due to surplus funds from previous years, GPSO has been able to give out an equal amount of academic support through scholarships and grants, totaling $28,050 this year.

The largest sum of money in this year’s budget was allocated to salaries for the GPSO executive committee at $58,750 total.

The top three earners are the president, the operations coordinators and the communications coordinator, all making $12,500 during the school year.

These top three salaries have not increased in recent years, Arruejo said.

The amount is higher for these three positions because they are student academic appointment jobs, meaning the students cannot hold other paid jobs.

Other funds from the budget go to GPSO community building, which provides social nights as well as co-sponsored events with graduate programs.

In the past, these events have included academic conferences with graduate programs within the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, the Jacobs School of Music and the Department of Religious Studies, Arruejo said.

Arruejo said starting this year the group has budgeted $250 for diversity efforts as part of the group’s $750 advocacy budget.

He said it is still unclear how this $250 will be used.

The general assembly passed the budget with 38 votes in support of the budget, one vote against and one vote abstained.

Telecommunications doctoral student Nic Matthews voted to pass the budget.

“We definitely do get to debate it, but it is presented as the best possible system,” Matthews said. “But I do trust it. GPSO tends to help a lot each year. It’s a good program.”

President of GPSO Brady Harman said the budget was received well, but he thought there would be more questions.

“We’re not like IUSA because we’re not based on platforms,” Harman said. “Every year the most money goes to compensation, then awards and, finally, programming.”

The assembly also voted and passed three resolutions.

The first concerned salary payments for SAA. Currently they are paid during a 10-month schedule that excludes summer months.

The resolution aimed to fix the challenge of summer budgeting by changing the first payment of the academic year to Sept. 5 and all other payments to the end of each month.

The next resolution aimed to show GPSO support for the use of preferred names for students.

They proposed restricting access to legal names to protect identities of students who use preferred names.

They plan to present their proposal to administrators.

Finally, the group voted on a resolution to show support for IU’s decision to join Freedom Indiana, a coalition fighting against House Joint Resolution 6, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

“I’m really happy we got things passed,” Harman said. “We are much more active this year. ”

Follow reporter Suzanne Grossman on Twitter @SuzannePaige6.