KnightNews.com spoke with SGA President Melissa Westbrook on Tuesday to get her view on the UCF budget deficit.
The A&SF budget deficit stems from student credit hour projections. Compared to last fall, students are taking 1.5 percent less credit hours and as a result the university is generating $1.45 million less in A&SF fees than anticipated. This gap represents 7.7% of the $18.8 million dollar A&SF that was approved in spring.
UCF is planning to trim expenses and use A&SF fee reserves to curb the impact of the $1.45 million dollar hole. When KnightNews.com spoke to SGA President Melissa Westbrook on how this will affect students, she was adamant that she does not want this to affect the students in any noticeable way.
“My outlook on the whole situation is that we just have to be more fiscally responsible and creative, because there’s no way I’m going to compromise the student experience this year for any amount of money,” Westbrook said.
As for trimming expenses, the talks are in early stages as to what would be cut.
“We’re not exactly sure what would be trimmed just yet, we’re still working on it. What we’ll have to do as an agency or a student government is look at different ways..if we wanted to have this event here, maybe we should have it here to have the same impact,” Westbrook said.
The reserves, as explained by Westbrook, are in place in case of an emergency such as a hurricane or other disaster where repairs would be needed. When asked if she supported taking money out of the reserves to quell the $1.45 million dollar impact, she was not entirely convinced yet.
“I’m on the fence about that, I don’t think you should pull all from reserves. That’s for us to deal with, you as people elected us to deal with challenges like this and entrusted us that we could come up with a creative solution. I don’t think we should pull all money from reserves, but I also don’t think we should be afraid to take some,” Westbrook said.
Watch the full video interview below:
