By Dorany Pineda
The Associate Student Union Budgetary Affairs Committee met during their monthly meeting to discuss the spending of the student representation fee on February 24.
The Student Representation Fee was voted into East Los Angeles College in the fall of 2012 for student advocacy events.
According to Education Code section 76060.5 of the Student Fee Handbook approved by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the Student Rep. Fee states that a student enrolled in a community college must pay a fee of $1 per semester.
ASU put forth a funding proposal for the spring 2017 General Assembly taking place in Ontario from May 5-7. Three candidates will be sent, including an adviser and two students.
Registration costs were estimated at $820, hotel at $497, per diem at $150 and incidentals at $200 for a total of $1,667.
After considering the board’s $1,800 spending budget, ASU Advisor Sonia Lopez asked if driving to Ontario and back would be a reasonable drive for ELAC attendees.
The board unanimously agreed that it was, and voted to amend the initial amount to $1,170, removing the hotel costs. An added stipulation specifying that the money could only be used for registration, food and incidentals, and not a hotel, was also passed.
Raul Rodriguez, a representative from ELAC’s Students Against Substance Abuse club (SASA), asked the board to fund this year’s three-day California Association for Alcohol and Drug Educators (CAADE) conference in the amount of $5,690 happening at the Sheraton Gateway in the Los Angeles International Airport April 21-23.
“This workshop will help us lay out a schematic of services…. Proposition 47 has now released a lot of inmates and they get lost in the system; it overwhelms them. So we need to figure out a model that’s going to work to help these students, and this is one way that we’re going to be able to gain some knowledge, by attending some of these workshops,” Rodriguez said.
After much deliberation, the board voted to reallocate $6,000 from the competitions account, $4,000 from the ASU promotions account, and $2,000 from the supplies account onto the student conference account for a total of $12,000.
The committee approved to fund the California Association for Alcohol and Drug Educators conference after reallocating money with an added stipulation that SASA must provide deposit slips by March 30 and that all students attending the CAAD conference must be ASU members.
ASU Vice President Brittany Ramirez, ASU Vice President of Finance Jessica Ramirez and Lopez refused to comment after the meeting.