USG discusses budget allocations
The Undergraduate Student Government Senate met on Tuesday night to discuss budget allocations and hear presentations from leaders of Program Board committees.
Legislative process · Senators Hayden Smith (left), Logan Burkhead (center) and Providence Illisevich (right) at the USG meeting Tuesday. night. – Joseph Chen | Daily Trojan
Treasurer Julie Stripe presented the fall budget, which allocated nearly $200,000 to USG-sponsored student organizations.
According to Stripe, the Concerts Committee received $93,229.55 in funding to cover production and talent costs. Stripe explained that this budget increase is required in order to support sophisticated setups and book popular artists.
“This is an expense that we’ve historically seen go up,” Stripe said. “In order for Concerts Committee to provide our students with the types of concerts they expect, we need to support them with our funds.”
The Senate voted unanimously to award $2,500 to the Environmental Student Assembly for its concert on Thursday night. The ESA will use the funds to finance a bicycle-powered stage.
“The [ESA’s] events will benefit the entire USC community,” Commuter Senator Hayden Smith said. “I would like to move forward with this project because I think this could be a springform for something bigger, such as powering the whole Springfest stage with bicycles.”
Senior Director of Communications Christie Hennes outlined her department’s social media strategy.
“We’ve actually increased our followers on Instagram by over 100 percent which is really exciting,” Hennes said. “We have done ‘Senator Spotlights’ on Tuesdays, ‘Trojan Throwbacks’ on Thursdays and are really trying to publicize the events we are doing on all of our platforms.”
Co-Director of External Relations Alana Victor discussed upcoming projects to increase student engagement with USG. External relations has partnered with the Office for Wellness and Health Promotion to encourage students to live healthier lifestyles.
“We hope to do things like hand out fruit on Trousdale [Parkway] for breakfast and increase awareness of dining options on campus other than those at Campus Center,” Victor said.
The Council of Presidents is another event that is in the works. Victor hopes to bring together the presidents of more than 800 student organizations to increase collaboration and inform student leaders about available funding from USG.
USG Vice President Rini Sampath concluded the meeting by sharing updates on her initiative to improve the housing process for spring admits. Sampath said the administration rejected a proposal to provide university housing for spring admits and that she is in talks with University Gateway Apartments.
“We met with Gateway hoping to get a floor sectioned off for spring admits,” Sampath said. “This seems like a really cool way to solve the problem of spring admit housing.”