In the midst of second semester, summer might be the furthest thing from students’ minds. But the MSU and its partners are looking even further ahead: to Welcome Week.
As faculty societies begin to gear up for another year of planning for the incoming first-years, the Student Success Centre (SSC) and the MSU, as part of the Welcome Week Review subcommittee of the Student Services Committee, have just compiled their financial report from Welcome Week 2012.
The report comes in the wake of last year’s changes to orientation fees. In the past, incoming first-years had to register and pay for a MacPass, allowing them entry for the week’s events; they no longer have to, and are instead automatically charged fees.
In a campaign led by then-MSU president Matt Dillon-Leitch, the 2012 annual general assembly met its quorum of three percent of the student body for the first time in 17 years. Because it had the required 601 students, all votes passed were binding. And the students chose to implement the $110 mandatory fee for Welcome Week for new first-years.
The aim was to create a system with a widely bought but reasonably priced pass in order to have a “bigger and better” Welcome Week.
But despite the ample cash and months for all of the parties to report back, the finances remain unclear.
“This is our first year of developing what this consolidated financial report is,” explained Gina Robinson, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and Director of the Student Success Centre.
But David Campbell, MSU VP (Administration), added that of the current breakdown, “we didn’t find any drastic areas that are way off.”
The $110 spent by each student is split between the MSU, the Student Success Centre, off-campus residence life, swag and miscellaneous merchandise, and the nine different faculties.
Campbell noted that there was some chance a “few dollars here and there” might be shifted from one division to another, but that the total value of the levy would stay consistent, potentially being indexed to CPI.
Although the breakdown was good, Campbell and Robinson explained that the reports sent to them from the faculty societies were far from consistent.
“Some of the statements weren’t really well put together,” said Robinson. “They didn’t always add [up] properly.”
Each faculty received $11 per student, but most supplemented this basic fee with additional money from their faculty societies.
“There were some faculties we had to go back to and ask for a second round of reporting, but there were no major [discrepancies],” Campbell said. “There’s nobody we suspect that egregiously misspent.”
He elaborated by saying that the faculties had no real guidelines for determining what constituted a Welcome Week expense.
Things like summer rep training or post-Welcome Week rep appreciation create some ambiguity when it comes to budgeting and reporting. And certain expenditures, like last-minute rain locations for faculty day, have resulted in misrepresented budgets and false deficits.
With this in mind, the faculty expenditures will be confirmed, said Campbell, but he didn’t expect the differences determined from clearing up ambiguity to amount to a lot of money.
Both Robinson and Campbell described their new roles as “gatekeepers” for the faculty finances, which are compiled and streamlined by the Office of Student Affairs for the first time this year.
“I feel really good about it because that way we can account to the student body exactly,” Robinson said.
The MSU and the Student Success Centre, like the faculties, received funds from the guaranteed sale of MacPasses to all first years.
The MSU and its divisions of Avtek and Campus Events are responsible for putting on Welcome Week concerts; this year, the performances by the Sheepdogs and Steve Angello cost roughly $40,000 and $50,000 respectively, including production costs, making them some of the biggest concerts Welcome Week has ever seen.
Meanwhile, the Student Success Centre offered a range of programming similar to what it has in past years, including $16000 spent on the Summer reading Program and $10,000 spent on the IRIS theatre production. It also funded the off-campus students’ Sunday night social, spending $7,000 as part of their goal to expand programming for off-campus students.
Dear Sil,
Why is social sciences have such a high faculty contribution compared to the other faculties
From,
Concerned student!!!
An important point for people to be aware of:
The amount spent is decided upon by the Faculties, and should NEVER be evened out to make it “fair” across the board.
If a faculty can throw a kick-ass week more efficiently than another faculty, that’s the problem of the less efficient faculty and its student leaders. That should encourage new students to want to change and improve the system… I had Welcome Week Administration telling me this year, as a planning member, that I couldn’t be boisterous about the swag donations we managed to obtain because it would make other faculties jealous… What’s unfair is that I was torn apart as a student leader because I was told I had to hide the product of literally hundreds of hours of work…
That is a LOT of money to spend on concerts. How much do those concerts add to the university experience?
Alternatively: $90,000/$6,000 = 15 students’ tuition paid for for a year. How much does THAT add to the university experience??
The summer reading program was a sad waste of money. Good intentions but poorly disseminated, it was not advertised well enough, hardly any students were able to attend when the author came because a) they did not know b) they had other welcome week programming. Additionally IRIS I feel could be done for less than 10,000 dollars
I agree with the above comment, IRIS could have been done with far less than $10 000. There were hardly any props or equipment that would require that kind of budget.
Also, it is important to consider how much welcome week appeals to students…Sure, there are some students who enjoy the loud concerts, cheering and football games, but then there are a great many of us who just feel left out during these events. When the only means of socialization available to us are pretending to enjoy football, or forcing oneself to be loud and crazy, many feel comfortable and out of place.
So it is important to ask, out of all the first years, how many really attended the concerts (or any of the events for that matter)? Did the welcome week experience really benefit students as much as it could have? Did we somehow grow and learn in the experience?
I can’t speak to a lot of Welcome Week and its spending, but I worked as the Stage Manager for IRIS for two years and actually feel that the budget they work with is very reasonable. There are a couple of factors working here:
1) Audience Size: There are no suitable theatre spaces that currently exist on campus that accommodate the number of students. As such, they use the largest space on campus (MDCL 1305/1307) that can be converted into a relatively cheap theatrical venue. Space costs money, and where space doesn’t cost money, you are usually converting it into a suitable venue (which, of course, costs money.)
2) A/V equipment (and technicians that are qualified to run it) cost money. Quite a bit, in fact. You’ll notice that IRIS works with a decent amount of equipment, to ensure that all the audience can see and hear the show to the best of their abilities. That includes microphones, sound systems, drape (stage curtains), and lighting. However, the biggest cost is for a/v equipment is man hours for the technician(s) working.
3) The director and stage manager are hired to work for IRIS– they are not volunteers, which ensures that people are hired with experience and ability to put on the show. It was not a lot: in fact, both years I worked for IRIS, it was supplementary to my main summer income.
4) They deliberately pare down set, costume, and props, because, you know, those things cost money, and they don’t actually have a lot of it.
5) There are extraneous costs associated with any event, including printing, programs, and feeding the volunteers, amongst others (all of the actors are volunteers who work long and sometimes inhospitable hours to make sure the show goes on. The least that can be done is ensure that they get fed.)
Ultimately, I think that there is a tendency for us to look at something like $10 000 and think that it is a huge, possibly unreasonable, sum of money. But, when you actually break down what it could cost to run a similar show in a high-quality, gigantic theatre space, with the best and newest equipment, and unionized theatre workers, IRIS is incredibly reasonable.
@”concerned as well” (a re-post, but this time it’s properly Replied)
As a part of past Welcome Week planning for Engineering, I will note how hard we strive to appeal to even those students who don’t enjoy the loud, high-energy activities. We ran several lower-key events, especially this past year, and despite an enormous social media campaign, and reps going around to advertise it, there was relatively little participation.
You can blame Welcome Week planners for planning high-energy events that appeal to only a certain group, but eventually all of the shy kids have to take some level of responsibility for making themselves aware/open to the other opportunities out there. Even the quiet, calm reps are not allowed to physically pull you and get you to do things if you choose not to; and I PROMISE there are plenty of first years who chose that path.
the whole idea of summer reading is dumb to begin with
students want to relax during summer, not read inspirational novels like their parents and grandparents
@”concerned as well”
As a part of past Welcome Week planning for Engineering, I will note how hard we strive to appeal to even those students who don’t enjoy the loud, high-energy activities. We ran several lower-key events, especially this past year, and despite an enormous social media campaign, and reps going around to advertise it, there was relatively little participation.
You can blame Welcome Week planners for planning high-energy events that appeal to only a certain group, but eventually all of the shy kids have to take some level of responsibility for making themselves aware/open to the other opportunities out there. Even the quiet, calm reps are not allowed to physically pull you and get you to do things if you choose not to; and I PROMISE there are plenty of first years who chose that path.