Computer labs forced to pay deficit
Individual computer labs will be forced to help pay part of the Information Technology budget deficit of more than $50,000, a decision made after student fee board members found student fees were needlessly raised to pay for the deficit, when the individual computer labs had more than enough to cover the costs.
Lisa Rose, agriculture senator, said the reason the fee increase was given in the first place was the fee board was told some of the computer labs would have to shorten their hours and wouldn’t be available to the students as much if the deficit wasn’t fixed.
“The deficit has to be fixed,” Rose said. “This is why we gave you the money, because we were told if we didn’t increase fees, computer labs would close and the TSC computer lab wouldn’t be open 24 hours during finals week. It doesn’t make any sense that IT is in deficit when you have the money.”
Kevin Abernethy, academic senate president, said if the fee board had known there was money from the individual computer labs then “there was no way” IT would have received a $3 per student increase, which was originally allocated to help with the increase in minimum wage and to help pull IT out of a deficit.
Currently, individual computer labs are permitted to save as much as they want of their budgets and carry that amount forward to the next year, something Abernethy said should be limited while the main IT account is in the hole.
“The $3 increase was based on IT being in the hole,” Abernethy said. “If IT hadn’t been in the hole, they wouldn’t have gotten $3. It is not fair to say ‘we are in the hole’ while all of these labs have carryover.”
Stacie Gomm, associate vice president for Information Services, said part of the problem is that IT is perpetuating “their own unreality” because they are unsure of their budgets every year until student enrollment is solidified. The budgets cannot be sure until students are actually enrolled because student fees pay 75 percent of computer lab budgets with fees, and departments fund 25 percent of their own computer labs to allow individual departments to have classes in some of the labs.
Although 25 percent of departmental labs are supposed to be paid for by the individual departments, some computer labs are paying that 25 percent out of their operating budget, which comes from student fees, Abernethy said.
“Operating budgets come from student fees,” Abernethy said. “If students are paying 100 percent of the computer lab, they need to have 100 percent access to it.”
To help prevent the central IT budget from going into the red again after the individual computer labs help pull it out, a 5 percent budget decrease was passed. Abernethy said even with the 5 percent decrease, the budgets will increase next year instead of decrease because of the $3 student fee increase that has already been passed.
“We are trying to get IT out of the red zone,” Abernethy said. “Unless we do something, this budget is going to just get further in the hole.”
Each individual computer lab will pay off the total deficit according to the percentage of the money they receive each year, which will leave surpluses in all of the labs, while paying off the deficit.
-debrajoy.h@aggiemail.usu.edu