What funding cuts say about Union Board

Union Board is facing yet another funding cut at the moment.

According to the most recent proposal by the Committee for Fee Review, Union Board will lose four cents per semester per student — more than $3,000 per year — beginning in fall 2013. However, this number isn’t as grand as years past.

In 2011, Union Board lost 70 cents per student per semester — more than $50,000 of the annual budget.

While the Board seems to be unfazed by these cuts, they indicate a larger issue at play.

Union Board is a good organization on campus, but the funding restrictions demonstrate the larger disconnect between student groups and actual students on campus.

I whole-heartedly support the work Union Board sets out to do.

Its general efforts have provided the campus with many cultural experiences and has provided my peers and friends with great opportunities in projects like the annual musical at the Buskirk-Chumley and the creative arts magazine Canvas.

With recent pitfalls in programming, it’s no wonder that students aren’t demanding Union Board retain its funding.

We all remember the Sublime massacre of 2012 — the event where every middle-aged druggie of Bloomington crawled out of his or her hookah den to take over the IU Auditorium.

The Auditorium only hosted the concert because ticket sales didn’t garner the original plan of using Assembly Hall.

The only plus side of that fiasco was I got secondhand high working the concert.
And while John Legend was a good effort, it didn’t quite sell as the Board had hoped it might.

Legend performed for a rather “not full” auditorium, as the Indiana Daily Student and Union Board stated.

Even great opportunities I already mentioned are starting to fade away.

Last year’s Union Board sponsored musical had to be renamed “An Evening of Kander and Ebb,” or, as many involved in the project liked to call it, “Shmishago.”

This came about because the hit musical “Chicago” was being produced until about a week before production, when the production team realized they didn’t have the rights for the show.

Union Board is a great organization on campus that we can all benefit from, but there is a sense of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”

With recent problems and flops, it’s hard for students to get angry about Union Board’s funding cuts.

Union Board can only provide better opportunities with better funding. So this is a bit of a catch-22.

At least Union Board has a much more active role on campus than other student organizations.

We essentially see what Union Board is doing at all times, and we see members taking an active role to provide good opportunities for students year-round. This can’t be said for all. So we’ll see who can break the awkward disconnect standoff first.

Maybe they should just bring Beyonce for Little 5 and win the hearts of us all.

­— sjostrow@indiana.edu