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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Union Board releases spring 2015 budget

The Indiana Memorial Union Board’s total student fee revenue for the spring 2015 semester is $103,398.49. These funds make room for a variety of events organized by the Union Board.

The board believes in financial transparency to show students how their money is being spent, according to the group’s ?website.

Adam Fialkowski, Union Board vice president of finance, said they began planning for this budget about halfway through last semester.

Fialkowski said the budget is a work in progress; it develops on an event-by-event basis.

He compared the budget to a marathon.

“You have a certain chunk of money to work with, and you have the full semester,” Fialkowski said. “And you have to provide consistent and quality programming throughout that semester.”

Committees themselves are not appropriated funds. Rather, it depends on the type of event they are planning, he said.

Fialkowski said potential events are drafted by 12 programming directors who lead specific committees within Union Board. Drafted events are then presented at a budgetary affairs meeting.

The meeting serves as a check and balance, Fialkowski said, to make sure the program is fiscally responsible and there are no discrepancies within the proposed amount.

If it is approved, he said, the proposed event moves on to the Union Board weekly meeting, where members discuss the program as a group and ask questions. Then, it is put to a vote.

“If it goes through, the money is officially passed for that program, and it will happen unless otherwise noted,” Fialkowski said.

Fialkowski’s role is to oversee the budget. He said he looks at the money actually spent on the event after it happens and determines where the budget currently stands.

“It’s about staying on top of the numbers to get everybody here the most accurate number I can so that they can do their job better,” he said.

In order to do that, the Union Board needs student support.

Most of their budget comes from student fees collected for each semester. Fialkowski said the Union Board currently receives $4.25 of student fee money from each student per semester.

Fialkowski said that the board’s goal is to use the entirety of its budget.

“Our goal is to spend to zero every semester, because technically that student experience, in terms of dollar amount, should be spent,” he said. “We don’t want to be rolling over a ton of money because then students really didn’t get the maximum benefit that they could’ve for that semester.”

Since the student fees are used to fund events, Fialkowski said it is really important to cover the majority of student interests, as well as interests that aren’t as widely embraced.

Upcoming events with the highest proposed funds thus far are Laverne Cox’s lecture on Jan. 14, Adam Devine’s performance on March 27 and RECESS, a college music and ideas festival coming to IU this ?semester.

Fialkowski said the board determined these events to be in line with student opinion and invested in them. However, student interest cannot be accurately determined without student voice.

“Student involvement is important to us because it’s really getting the opinions of a lot of people as to what’s good and what isn’t,” Fialkowski said. “Although we have a board here of a group of reasonably diverse people, we still can’t provide all the different things that the University community might need.”

Fialkowski said that Union Board accepts student input on budgetary affairs. The weekly meetings are open to students, and take place at 6 p.m. on Thursdays in the Distinguished Alumni Room of the Indiana Memorial Union.

He said students could easily voice their opinions at weekly meetings or by becoming directly involved with Union Board.

“We always love student input because that’s what we’re here for,” Fialkowski said. “We’re here to serve the students to the best of our ability.”

The Union Board’s current budget is posted on its website. Students can access the budget to view the expenses related to each upcoming event and keep up with changes in the budget online at ub.indiana.edu/ub-financials.

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