By Casey Breznick and Nathaniel Hunter
In a rare stroke of fiscal conservatism and fiscal responsibility, Cornell’s Student Assembly voted 23 to 2 on November 21 to affirm the appropriations committee’s funding recommendation for the African, Latino, Asian, and Native American (ALANA) Intercultural Programming Board, an umbrella organization on campus for 45 multicultural organizations, according to their website. The approved measure amounted to a reduction in funding of nearly $25,000 for the 2014-2016 cycle. The two dissenting votes came from the assembly’s two minority representatives.
Geoffery Block, vice president of the Appropriations Committee, guided the assembly and audience through ALANA’s numerous violations of its own constitution, funding rules, and alleged flagrant misuse of funds and exorbitant spending on its organization’s activities and events, especially those involving food.
Some examples of the fiscal irresponsibility included spending $5,600 on a $1,000-capped event called Filthy Gorgeous and spending $92 per attendee on Rap Sessions when normally $20 per attendee is the max. Another criticism Block and the appropriations committee offered of ALANA was its poor bookkeeping and the unaccountability of $8,000 even after their funding application was revised three times due to incongruence and failure to report figures correctly.
Part of the uproar over the reduction stemmed from some community member’s belief that the decision to reduce spending was made because the university does not prioritize diversity.
Earlier that day, the Cornell Daily Sun ran an editorial supporting the assembly’s decision (once again, in a rare stroke of fiscal conservatism from the Sun). It also ran a news article and two submitted letters which insinuated that the issue at hand was not misspent dollars, but squashing on-campus diversity.
When representatives of ALANA took the microphone to make their case before the Student Assembly for a revised, more moderate request of funding, they acknowledged that there had been many mistakes made in the management of their funds.
As the major reason for its fiscal irresponsibility and lack of oversight, ALANA identified a difficult transition of its Executive Board last year, and concluded with the their wish to make this into a “learning experience.”
The organization’s representatives then claimed that they had already put into effect various cost-cutting measures and other safeguards to prevent such overspending and misuse of funds from occurring again. They submitted a revised request for funding that would cost each student $10.75 from his or her activity. ALANA cited growing membership as the primary reason for a funding increase.
Later in the proceedings, Block shot back at ALANA with a blunt denial of sympathy and pointed out that an organization going through a learning process should not be handling over a hundred thousand dollars of funding. He also questioned ALANA’s requests for more funding in light of the organization’s own projections of declining spending over the next two years.
The Student Assembly’s hard line stance on ALANA’s irresponsibility should come as a positive to campus conservatives and all those who place common sense and fiscal conservatism over political correctness and bowing to popular outcry.
