Even though the funding budget for Georgia State’s Student Government Association (SGA) has decreased for the coming year, the association plans to gain more student visibility in the approaching months.
Sabastian Parra, SGA president, said he wants the association to build on traditions and create new ones through making apps and fostering partnerships.
“When I came into SGA three years ago, we kind of did some things here and there with departments. But this year we are doing partnerships with athletics, Organizations of the Game, [and] we are co-sponsorship the first game of the semester next weekend…” he said. “We are looking to make investments for the long run that can stay here for at least five years.”
Learning from last year
Last year SGA’s 2015 fiscal budget said the association planned to spend $86,577, but it went over budget $5,000, according to Director of the Georgia State student center Boyd Beckwith. He said it was planned.
“Overall, the $5,000 that this budget went over doesn’t affect anything, because the money would have went back into university reserves,” he said. “There’s money that was left over in another budget that’s not directly tied to student government.”
More than $29,000 went to SGA’s public relations, even though the association originally planned to spend about $12,000, according to SGA’s budget for FY2015.
Beckwith said $12,000 went towards buying 5,000 mugs, and the rest paid for t-shirts, sunglasses and vertical banners.
The mugs are free of charge for students and gives discounts in the Student Center, College of Law and Centennial Café, according to Beckwith.
“It is mutually beneficial,” he said. “It’s one less mug that’s going in the landfill because they are being reused now. That’s why its go green and stay green. You are helping the environment and saving money.”
SGA also overspent to provide Blue Books and Scantrons to students in their office, the library and Information Center, according to Beckwith.
“They have done a much better job at letting students know that they exist,” he said.
Beckwith said SGA didn’t spend as much money last fiscal year on co-sponsorships as they planned, and some organizations didn’t follow through with their co-sponsorship.
“What I know is we agreed to pay the security for The Alliance drag show at the Rialto, and they never submitted the bill. So, that is $500 we allocated but never got sent,” he said.
What SGA is planning for this year
SGA is bringing a new app, called The Buzz, to students this fall that will be loaded with issues of The Signal Newspaper and USA Today, according to Beckwith. He said WRAS and GSTV could be added later.
“It is much cheaper than the hard copies were, and since people weren’t really picking up copies like we wanted them to, the Student Activity Fee Committee thought it would be better used to invest in this app instead,” he said.
He also said for fiscal year 2016, $15,000 was allocated to The Buzz.
The Collegiate Readership program, which supplied issues of the New York Times and USA Today, cost about two times more than The Buzz will, with $31,709 allocated towards program last fiscal year, according to Beckwith
Issues of the New York Times and USA Today will no longer be on the stands at Georgia State, according to Beckwith.
“The Student Activity Fee Committee has allocated significantly less money for the digital app because it’s cheaper because there’s no paper and no printing expense to it,” he said. “ They reallocated the other part of that to other things that student government doesn’t oversee.”
SGA has also partnered with the Student Alumni Association to fund a traditions promoting app that will be available within the next two weeks, according to Parra.
“Students will be able to have 100 things they are supposed to do at Georgia State before graduating and they take a picture and you post it,” he said. “Also we can send notifications when events are happening.”
The association budgeted to spend $85,202 for the 2016 fiscal year, according to the SGA budget proposal for FY16.
SGA’s VP of Budget & Finance Tobi Soyebo said the association will be spending less money on co-sponsorships this year because they weren’t used as widely as anticipated.
“We want to work to have more co-sponsorships because in the past we haven’t really been able to use that total funding,” he said.
Organizations United, which provides funding information to student organizations and university departments, will also receive a funding cut down to $2,000 from last year’s $4,000, according to SGA’s 2016 fiscal year budget.
“We will probably have two events, one in the spring and one for the fall,” Soyebo said. “We would have one event for $1,000 just to pay for the room reservation. We would do the same thing for the following semester.”
But SGA will be spending over $6,000 on buying Blue Books and Scantrons, according to the budget.
“Because a lot of people have been asking us if we are going to start providing the blue Scantrons. So that is what we wanted to do with that,” Soyebo said.
SGA also plans to spend $13,000 this fiscal year for public relations, according to the budget.
The association plans to redesign their brand, according to Soyebo.
“We want to make sure that we are keeping ourselves creative…making sure that everything we do is something new [and] not something [that] is the same every year,” he said.
Print Correction: In the Aug. 25 print version, The New York Times is not apart of the USA Today app. The correction has been made in the online version.
