USG’s budget prioritizes entertainment above all else

Spring semester is an important time for Undergraduate Student Government and student organizations as a whole. USG elects new leadership, and some of the bigger student programs put on major events, such as USC Concerts Committee’s Springfest. As it happens, the two events are far from unrelated. 

A major part of USG’s responsibilities includes setting budgets for different student organizations such as Concerts Committee, Speakers Committee, Environmental Student Assembly and many more. All of these groups are categorized under “Programming Allocations,” and, if one looks at the numbers, they will find that the budgets set for these different programs vary greatly.

USG holds a large amount of power regarding how the University spends its money. For the current academic year, USG has a budget of over $2 million. A portion of these funds goes toward student government payroll, communication services and bystander intervention training, as well as other more bureaucratic necessities.

Aside from these funds, USG put just under $1.4 million toward programming allocations for this school year. Within this amount, there are huge disparities between the budgets of different school programs. In fact, there is one program in particular that receives more funds than any other body on the list: Concerts Committee.

This year, the committee’s budget is nearly $600,000. To put this number in perspective, Speakers Committee receives the second highest amount of money from USG programming allocations at $109,000 this year. That is almost $500,000 less than the Concerts Committee’s budget. 

In fact, the Concerts Committee’s budget is greater than the combined budgets of the Latinx Student Assembly, the International Student Assembly, the Queer and Ally Student Assembly, the Environmental Student Assembly, the Black Student Assembly, the Asian Pacific American Student Assembly, the Academic Culture Assembly and the Special Events Committee.

Adding to its budget, Concerts Committee is giving students the option to purchase multiple Springfest guest tickets. So on top of its budget and however many thousands of dollars go into the Springfest programming, Concerts Committee will also be bringing in money from the event. 

This begs the question: What are our priorities as a school? Yes, the events put on by  Concerts Committee are well-attended and inclusive to at least most of the USC community. But does an off-campus event that is essentially ticketed for the general public really deserve a whopping majority of USG’s funds? 

Meanwhile, student programming such as the Performing Arts Committee and Political Student Assembly each receive about 5% of what Concerts Committee receives to put on concerts with expensive, big-name artists. There is absolutely no reason that these important programs should be getting a significantly lower budget than an organization that puts on concerts. In fact, perhaps if these less-funded organizations even received just a little bit of the funding from Concerts Committee, they would be able to put on more well-attended events and raise awareness for things that are perhaps more important than a free Saweetie concert.

Of course, all students should be the ones determining how to divvy up USG’s budget. The legislative branch is made up of 12 popularly elected senators who are supposed to represent the interests of the undergraduate student body. However, about less than a quarter of undergraduate students voted in the recent USG presidential election, and even fewer turn out for senatorial elections. If students want to combat the budget inequities within student programming, then they should make it a priority to attend USG senate meetings and participate in school elections.