THE CADRE, OCTOBER 22, .1974, PAGE 2 -
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Editorial ' J
Where. do S. U. funds go?
As soon as we register at this university each year, we are given the honour of auto- matically becoming a member of the U.P.E.I. Student Union, (whether you want to join or not). Our first duty as a mem— ber of the Student Union is to pay our dues, and for many students, this is the last time that they will here from the Student Union. This little ritual at the beginning of the year requires us to pay $40.00 Student Union fees, $6.00 for a year book (many of which are still sitting in the basement of Memorial Hall because they were never sent out to the Sen— iors from two years ago, and t as for the one from last year, there is still no word on them) and we also get to pay $8.00 for our Blue Cross medical plan. It is also interesting that we are required to pay these fees in full at the beginning of the year and not half each semester as ‘ we do with all other university fees (which causes a lot of problems for students who only go to school for the first sem- ester).
Since we have all now paid our dues, I though you might be interested in knowing where the money goes. We do pay Student Union fees, but we pay it to the business office and not to the Student Union. In fact the Student Union hasn't even seen one cent of the money that we payed during registration. From our Student Union fees, the business office collected $56,320. (1408 students mult— iplied by $40.00). From our year book fees they received $8,448 and from our medical fees they received $11,264 (if you are wondering why we don't have Blue Cross cards yet, it is because the business office is still holding our money). When you add up all these figures, it turns out that the business office is now holding $76,032 of Student Union money. a
Registration was completed on September 6 and it is now October 22, and still no word from the business office. At the cprreptlrate..of..fiintere3t .
\
.for that large amount of money, theubusiness office has already
made more than $1,000 interest
on Student Union money. I donft
really understand the reason why, but when the business office does decide to give the Student Union our money, they give it to them in parts, and not all at once.
When the Student Union does get the money, this is what they tentatively plan to do with it (I say tentatively because there has not been a financial statement presented yet). The money for the year
book will go to its fund, which
will leave the Student Union with a mere $56,320. From this will go payment to the Barn of
approximately $17,000 which will then only leave them with about
$40,000. From this amount, the
largest expense that we have is
saleries and honorariums. We have some full time employees such as a secretary and a person who cleans the barn (both of which are underpaid) but besides them, almost all‘ the rest of the money goes to student employees. Executive: President — $1,000 Treasurer - $800. Vice President - $600 Comptroller - $500 Communications — $500
If these people do their
jobs (which is still in question
for a few of them) over the span of the school year, their
salary amounts to almost noth-'
ing, considering the amount of time they must'put in.
After the executive, the next highest paid member by the Student Union is our speaker, whose only job is to chair all Student Union meet—
ings and interpret the Constitj
ution. In fact the rest of the job description requires the speaker not to do things such as hold any other office. For
this wonderful job, our speaker
gets paid $350. Our speaker speaker enjoyed the job so much that it is now being held for the second year by the same person.
There are quite a few other paid positions but all of the money is a mere tokenism, such as the paid people at CSUR,
the CADRE, the photo club, etc. Most of these saleries, when put
in terms of the amount of time spent it ends up many times being about 10 to 20 cents and hour. ' h
What I am saying is that almost every person who gets a salary from the Student Union, gets money but it is really an immaterial amount. You do the job because you enjoy working for the Student
Union, and not because you are out to make money. I must
admit that there are a few exceptions. If you become a
Campus Policeman, you can get
$10 for working at a Pig 'n' Whistle from 8:30 to 12:30.
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later than 12:30, but it still than .works out to over $2.00 an
hour. You could also become
a bartender at the Pig, which I . means you would be part of the only Support it if they makei
three way split of $45. If you want to make money from
the Student Union these are twoFall FeStival afid our Winter;
,good jobs to get, though it isn't quite that easy unless you know the right people. So where else does Student Union money go. As you may remember from the Student Union executive campaign speeches, they want to run every Student Union function at a profit, or at least at a break even level. A line that has come from the Stu— dent Union recently is that if we didn't have a Student Union, there wouldn't be any more Pig 'n' Whistles. Well this is supposed to be one of those functions that is given to the students as a service. What it ends up be;
'ing is a money making enter-
prise for the Student Unionh They tell us that our Student Union fees help pay for it, yet they make money on just about every Pig. Last year when the prihe of beer went up, the Pig's price went from 50¢ to 60¢ not to 55¢. There are still places down town where you can get a beer for 55¢ but at our Pigs (paid for by the Student Union) we have to pay 60¢.
We have a movie club this year that has been attempting to get more and better movies
Ifyou’d - _ _ _ to know £3?
about
. t0 .. a about you! Meetus on campus October 31.
CANADIAN IMPERIAL , ,, . . 'BA, ill-H) 15mm
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we have ever had in the; past. This could be consider: pas a service to the students. yet the Student Union will ’
a profit or break even. J .we have lost money on our *
Carnival in the past. Yet our enterprising Student Union ' executive plans to run each V one of these activities this? year at a break even level. ' These are functions brought to us by the Student Union, but we are going to have to pay a high price in order to. enjoy them. . ',j ‘ When we pay that much monq; at the beginning of the year, to our Student Union, my.fed ing is that it should go to—: wards providing services for: the students. After we have paid this large amount of money why should we have to pay so much to participate in any of the functions. So . we lose money on some thingsg so what. We the students have paid over $56,00 to have functions provided to us, not so we~tan help enrich the' a1T“thesEffuhctibfiswarETEoing to operate at a profii,‘where does the rest of the Student Union money go? By the way, , don't get discouraged. There, should be more activities offered to you next year, befi cause the Student Union is, V now drafting a bill that will raise our Student Union fees* from $40 to $50 a year.
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