FUSA, on the outside, may seem like any other college or university student government association. They put on programs, make decisions for the better of the student body and offer students the chance to become involved in structured government while in college.
But FUSA President Kevin Neubauer ’05 is proud that FUSA runs itself under a different tune than other area universities that he keeps in touch with via e-mail and at conferences.
FUSA will take close to $400 dollars of your money before you graduate to fund the body’s operations. The operation of FUSA is what makes it unique from other schools: all the different divisions operate under one roof.
The close to $100 per year is similar at other colleges, according to Bobbi Sue Gibbons, Marist College’s student government president. At Marist, the student government is funded by the same means as Fairfield: taking a section of students’ student fee and multiplying it by the number of students.
But what is different about Fairfield and Marist is that Gibbons oversees everything in the government, including Senate and the school’s programming: Neubauer does not oversee Senate. Geoff Cook ’05, VP of Senate has that responsibility. VP of Programming Jillian Grant ’05 takes care of the programming.
None of these things would work without a budget, however, and that’s where the student body money comes in: But why is $21,000 spent each year to fund the training of FUSA members?
“Leadership Development [FUSA training] enables FUSA members to do their jobs,” Neubauer said. “About half of that is spent to house myself and the vice presidents here at Fairfield over the summer. It pays for what essentially is our summer job and allows me to get ahead in my class schedule.”
Neubauer also commented that this chunk of money is also used for the week-long training in August for all members and to pay for things like freshmen elections and publicity for FUSA in general at the beginning of the school year.
The budget is submitted to Senate for approval and is then turned over to the finance director for management.
All FUSA expenditures require student signature confirmed by administrative signature.
FUSA Senators interviewed by The Mirror said the budget expenditures, including thousands of dollars for training and office supplies, were reasonable and helpful.
“I think the money we spend on ourselves is beneficial to the student body. The president and vice presidents do a lot of work to get ready for the year to serve the students. It’s good over the summer to form bonds with each other and administrators,” said Jenn Cole ’06, a FUSA senator.
One senator said it was important to re-evaluate the budget every year in order to maximize the budget’s impact.
“The number needs to be re-examined and consistently re-examined … to make sure it is being used as efficiently as possible,” said Chris Huff ’04, a FUSA senator.
According to FUSA executives, a significant portion of the budget goes to programming.
“A good portion” of the money is spent on programming here, according to Neubauer. With a budget of $260,400 for 2003-2004, more than 60 percent goes to the funding of weekend programs, major concerts or other FUSA sponsored events for the students.
This is how FUSA has operated over the years, according to Jeanne DiMuzio, FUSA advisor from 1990-1999.
“Using the base budget, the FUSA president and his executive branch would develop a budget that would provide training support for Senate and Student Court and programming allocations for class councils, clubs, weekend programming, concerts/special events and lectures,” she said.
There are limitations on the budget, however. When a certain section of the budget fails to have enough money, some groups may co-sponsor with another to create more funds, Neubauer said. For instance, FUSA may team with Inter Residence Hall Government for a program in the residence halls.
A source of funds when DiMuzio was advising FUSA was a “Student Activity Pass” that FUSA would sell to parents for approximately $50 and gave them free range to FUSA programs for students.
“On average, 150 passes were sold,” Dimuzio said. “This would generate $7,500 in revenue.” Neubauer had no knowledge of this and said he would look into it.
FUSA is independent in how they choose their programs, basing a large emphasis on past history of programs and their attendance numbers. One initiative FUSA has created just recently is the implementation of an online survey to help pick the spring concert.
The results of the StagWeb survey for the spring concert have yet to be tallied and Neubauer says that the survey will be redistributed through an e-mail on StagWeb due to the low number of votes thus far.
The bands in the survey were picked by a group on the programming board and were bands “that will be available when we hope to have the concert in the spring” Neubauer said. Neubauer was more than happy about the Dave Chappelle two weeks ago and gives the people in the programming board all the credit for getting the popular act to come to Fairfield.
“It was absolutely worth the money,” he said. “The job of the programming board is to provide entertainment for the students and given the turn out of the performance, that’s something they accomplished [with the Chappelle performance].
Neubauer is confident that FUSA has enough money to keep doing what its doing, keeping the students happy.
“As long as we’re aware of the costs that are coming and going and how much time is left in the year,” Neubauer said, “I think we can make our organization function pretty well.”
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