Society budgets slashed after ‘closed-door’ YUSU meeting
Campus societies have accused YUSU of “closed-door decision making” after budgets were cut dramatically last term.
Music Society, the largest Union society, received a grant of £1,245 last year but will receive no money from YUSU this year. Campus magazine Bad Taste saw its budget cut from £4,094 to £2,765 while Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans (LGBT) Social’s budget was more than halved from £1,100 to £493.33.
Many societies have suffered budget cuts after the overall amount available for allocation fell. In the 2007/08 academic year £35,817 was allocated amongst 56 societies, an average of £639.59 per society. In 2008/09 £31,100 has been divided amongst 67 societies, giving an average of £464.18.
In previous years society treasurers have been invited to draw up a budget to present it to a meeting of Union Finance Committee for approval. The meeting was originally scheduled by former Societies and Communications Officer Sam Bayley for Monday, June 2. It was then cancelled by email on Sunday night and rescheduled for June 9. The rescheduled meeting was then also cancelled.
On Thursday, June 19 Bayley emailed societies to inform them that he and Service Finance Officer Matt Burton had made a series of “prudent cuts” to budget proposals and that the cut-down budgets would be submitted to Finance Committee instead of the original grant requests made by treasurers.
In the email Bayley described as the proposals made by himself and Burton as a “fair, balanced offer for all interested societies.” He asked treasurers to “be reasonable and sensible about this – this budget is a hard job to put together and we feel we’ve done it as well as possible. Changes at this time still are possible but are difficult.”
Society chairs reacted angrily to the handling of the budget. Former LGBT Social chair Michael Rutherford said: “From start to finish, the communication from Sam Bayley was appalling. We were never told when the meeting was going to be, and it was only through hounding him that we got any information. Then, our meeting was cancelled and YUSU opted to do the full process without any input. Our budget was more than halved from the 2007-08 figure without any consultation.”
“LGBT Social and several other societies were the victims of a lazy process,” Rutherford added.
Music Society treasurer James Harper said: “The entire process was poorly managed and we were marginalised in the process without any attention paid to our needs. Sam Bayley just did not care.”
In a statement the Zahir, which lost £680, said: “We were disappointed to find that our own society grant had been slashed by almost half without any warning or any satisfactory explanation.”
Rutherford and the chairs of Lazerus, Fragsoc and Science Fiction & Fantasy Society sent Bayley a joint statement on June 25 claiming “the procedure undertaken made it impossible for many societies to present an effective and accurate budget proposal.”
Labour Club Chair David Levene, a society that was given the funding it requested, said: “There was very, very little consultation and it was very disorganised.”
Speaking to Nouse this week, Bayley rejected claims that the societies had been shut out of the budgeting process. He said: “The Finance Meeting was not cancelled altogether, all of the society budgets were presented to a Finance Committee which had the final say on how funds were distributed. Societies were able to attend the meeting if they so wished, and in fact some did. The team was busy but did not neglect its duties to society budgeting.”
“When people say that communication was poor what they actually mean is that they didn’t check their emails,” he added.
Burton said: “I think we could have been better at communicating what we were doing and about some meetings being cancelled but there was still the opportunity, and some societies took it, to come and say why they needed more money. We could have been better at communicating how that was done.”
Burton said that the smaller amount of money allocated directly to societies this year was the result of a number of factors, including rising overhead costs, but was largely down to the decision to hire a new staff member in the Student Activities Office. The office will provide “front of house support to committees and societies.”
He denied that the cuts were linked to the YUSU bar project, currently budgeted at £300,000.
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Just to respond to Sam Bayley’s comments, I checked the society emails every day during the budget process. We just didn’t get any information. We didn’t get an email to tell us to get our budgets in. We didn’t get an email to invite us to a finance committee meeting. It was only though a series of emails and information from the treasurer of another society that we got any of this information.
In terms of being allowed to go to the final Finance Committee meeting, I have looked through my emails and was never told that. I’m not sure how we were meant to know when it was or whether we were invited.
Well done to Matt Burton on admitting errors, but I stand by my comments that not only was the process closed and done in a lazy way, we also got very little communication.
Several societies were not even informed about the cancellation of a finance committee meeting. I was personally not informed of the date of the meeting for our own budget. I was able to attend one finance meeting but the others were not well-publicised. I know other society Chairs that suffered similarly. And I saw the slashed budgets of many societies in the final Excel document that we all received with the grant allocations. No changes could be made afterwards and consultation before hand was close to minimal at best.
But hey ho, what are you going to do? Just be clever with your money and look for outside funding. My society will stay afloat this year despite spending more than previous years… and our grant allocation is less than before. Chin up, guys, and think your way out of it
As with the other two people that have posted, we also didn’t get any information about the process, and know of many societies that were in the same boat.
To Sam – the socsXYZ@york.ac.uk account was added to Outlook. This means that it gets checked at the same time as all my other York and home accounts. This happens around 10 times a day, and still nothing came through about grant application deadlines, the final allocation, or about any meetings to discuss the allocation. I think I actually got notified about the final allocation from a friend in another society committee.
Looking back, the only notification that we had to have our grant application finalised and submitted was about 3 lines in Your:News. In fairness, this isn’t really a decent way of communicating with societies (especially as it’s actually an opt out service).
Fair enough with the budget cuts if you haven’t got as much money this year, but at least tell us something about the procedure as it’s going on…
Not sure what Sam Bayley means about “When people say that communication was poor what they actually mean is that they didn’t check their emails,” – he admitted to me (as fragsoc’s sec) that his mailshot server broke and hadn’t been emailing lots of societies – in writing. This was in the week following the deadline for the grant, so very much after the fact.
He did accuse us at first of being lazy and not checking our mail, but then realised his server was broken. It’s a shame then when nouse spoke to him he changed his story back to save face.
“To Sam – the socsXYZ@york.ac.uk account was added to Outlook. This means that it gets checked at the same time as all my other York and home accounts.”
Genius. I so need to do that!
But yeah… from the person who decided to reform Communication Committee the communication was pretty poor!