The University of Wyoming’s Student Body Government, ASUW, held their final meeting ahead of budget deliberations, one of the most important meetings of the year. This week, the senate discussed student fees and financial issues in addition to confirming a new Director of Marketing.
Members discussed updates on the price of parking permits, fines and procedures that would directly impact students as early as April or May of this year.
The UW Central Fee Committee (CFC), on which Vice President Hunter Swilling and Senator Brittany Stadler sit as student representative voting members, passed a 4-1 vote in favor of increasing Orange, Brown, Gold, Gold+, and Red parking permits. All permits will now cost at least $200 annually, with Gold+ set to be available exclusively for faculty and staff at $468 a year.
“The vast majority of the revenue will go towards paying off the bonds for the parking garage which are approximately $30 million. [The CFC] made the argument that if we want additional parking, we can’t have both cheap parking and more parking,” said Swilling.
Members also addressed issues regarding pay for international students. UW’s International Graduate Students serving on ASUW, many of whom were already working internships required by their programs, risked a violation of their student visas in accepting payment for work on ASUW.
The International Student Association repeatedly brought this issue forward to ASUW with the first time being the initial senate meeting of the year. In his remarks during communication, Swilling explained a new solution to this issue.
“I spoke with Jim Ahern, who is the Dean of the School of Graduate Education. And he has agreed to help fund slash solve our issue. His office has agreed to pay for half of the tuition and fees for any graduate student who is interested in serving in ASUW senate,” said Swilling.
“It’s not a perfect solution, because it would require them to receive permission to have half the hours of the other position [internships, research etc.]. However, it is by far the best solution that we have available to us. We thank him very much for paying for that, it is not cheap– about $16,000 per person. So we’re very, very happy about that and thank him for his generosity.”
ASUW also welcomed a new Director of Marketing, Arturo Rameirez, just in time for election season.
Rameirez, a recent UW MBA graduate, is a student of digital marketing and hopes to utilize his skills to harness the power of social media to better engage the UW student body and increase ASUW awareness campus wide.
ASUW will pick up next week with its most pressing task of the semester: the budget meeting.
Senator Colter Anderson, chair of the Budget and Planning Committee, spoke to a realignment for student organizations moving forward.
“The funding board is rather well, I don’t know if it’s unfortunate or fortunate, but regardless, is running out of money in their fund for subsiding events. We’ve been approving tons and tons of those over the last couple of weeks.”
“So they’ve come to us looking for a little bit more money to put in that fund, especially considering that they’ve had a few quite large events come in already for the next week or two.”
A sum of about $8,500 has been reallocated from other accounts, allowing upcoming events to proceed. However, Anderson remarked that though they want to fund as many events as possible for the rest of the year, it is probable that they will run out of funds by May.
More budget issues are sure to be discussed at length in next week’s ASUW meeting where Swilling vowed the organization will not leave without finishing a budget.
