SGA may raise fees to cover budget
40K in wrong account

By Jonathan Sampson
Staff Reporter

The Student Government Association is considering increasing student fees by $5 a semester after about $40,000 of yearbook money was incorrectly directed into SGA’s budget in fall 1999. This made the budget appear larger than it actually was, said SGA Adviser Larry Markley.

Student fees are currently $20 a semester.

Markley said that when the mistake was discovered last Friday, it forced SGA to immediately re-evaluate their budget.

He said SGA will consider raising student fees to compensate for the loss of money, but the change wouldn’t happen until 2002 and would be voted on by the student body.

He said that based on an expected $290,000 income for last year, SGA budgeted $275,000. It now looks like that without the yearbook money, SGA actually has $252,000 to work with.

“If we spent all of this year’s budget of about $275,000, the funding would have only been to the $252,000 level,” Markley said. “So we would automatically spend $23,000 over our budget for this year.”

Markley said the lower budget will cause SGA to re-evaluate programming for the next budget year.

He said Programming Council’s events are already scheduled for this semester, so money will not be cut from each event. He said the difference in money will probably be made up by the House of Student Representatives.

“House has not spent a lot of money,” Markley said. “So there’s quite a bit (of money) on the House side, and that might mean that the Permanent Improvement Committee’s budget may not be spent this year.”

Controller Cheryl Wilson said she traced the problem back to fall 1999 after Markley questioned a lower proposed budget for this year. She said the problem happened because the account code for yearbook payments was the same as the one for student government fees. Wilson said students were charged correctly, but the money was directed into the wrong account.

Wilson was not employed as the controller when the mistake occurred, but she said the problem probably stemmed from the transfer to PeopleSoft, the university’s student administration system.

“My only guess would be that it was some sort of conversion problem from the old computer system to the new one,” she said.

Kathy Hamer, coordinator of publications for Campus Life, said she was told last week that money was missing from the budget. She said that because of the yearbook’s publication schedule, money comes in and out at odd times, so it is difficult for anyone to know that money is missing.

Hamer said it is also difficult to track money because, although the yearbook is self-supporting, all of its finances are handled through Campus Life.

Markley said he heard discussions in Campus Life last fall about the missing money, but he did not involve himself because he didn’t think it concerned SGA.

Rick Barnes, director of special projects for student affairs, works with the yearbook budget and was unavailable for comment.

Jonathan Sampson
j.m.sampson@student.tcu.edu