According to a member of UW-Madison's Student Services Finance Committee, students will see a noticeable difference in tuition if certain student organizations receive the funding from segregated fees they have requested.
However, Carl Camacho, Associated Students of Madison vice chair and a member of SSFC, said it was too early to tell whether segregated fees would increase.
SSFC began its budget hearings for student organization Monday. A number of groups, including the Multicultural Student Coalition and the Asian and Pacific American Council, have proposed significantly higher budgets for the 2002-'03 school year.
'Budgets [that] are increasing are in the hundreds of percents,' SSFC member Rob Staude said. 'It would end up being a fairly significant percent over past years.'
MCSC and the Diversity Education Staff, two arms of the same organization, are proposing the largest increases in funding. MCSC's budget for 2001-'02 was $114,703; for 2002-'03, it has proposed a budget of $977,418, a 752 percent increase.
Tshaka Barrows, a member of MCSC, refused to comment on the situation until the group's hearing Oct. 24.
Camacho said a reason for increased budgets of MCSC and DES was the need to hire more academic staff to 'complement the new resources that the coalition is asking for' to address campus issues on a 'grander, more comprehensive scale.'
'I think that student-of-color organizations all have a common dilemma and that is hate crimes, racial intolerance on this campus [and] a toxic campus climate,' Camacho said. 'And a big part of that is the ineducation on diversity by a majority of the campus community.'
Camacho said he did not think any of the organizations had planned the increases together.
'This country, this university and this society as a whole have to deal with these issues,' he said.
He said SSFC members should consider the reasoning behind the allocation of funding.
'What are the services that students are in need of, and what are the services that this university does not provide'? he said.
APAC is asking for $292,830 for 2002-'03 after operating with a budget of $62,521 for 2001-'02.
APAC chair Heidi Kong, said she had no comment on specific budget numbers proposed by APAC.
'I'd encourage anybody to attend our budget hearing to better understand our organization and the services we provide,' she said.
Staude said he was really interested to hear how certain student groups were going to justify their increased proposed budgets.
'It's pretty shocking when you look at a budget and it's at those levels,' he said. 'But on the other hand, if it's going to dramatically increase the services that students have offered to them, then that's a different story.'
