By Jeff Sklar
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday Feb. 20, 2002
Reece seeks to streamline club funding
Current ASUA Sen. Jennifer Reece wants to protect club funding and make sure club events don't conflict.
The biochemistry junior said if elected executive vice president of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona, she would focus on streamlining the club funding process and improving communication among organizations.
Reece has spent the last two years working closely with clubs, serving one year on the senate and one on the appropriations board, which reviews club-funding requests.
She also serves on the university's Strategic Planning and Budget Advisory Committee and works with Campaign Arizona, UA's $1 billion fund-raiser.
Reece said her involvement on campus has familiarized her with the issues facing the approximately 360 clubs ASUA oversees.
Already this year, she has worked to organize the Club Olympics, an athletic competition meant to build relationships among organizations, which is scheduled to be held during Spring Fling in April.
If elected, she would continue to oversee the Club Olympics, but would also try to increase relationships between the senate and clubs by familiarizing appropriations board members with the funding process, which she said needs to be "consistent, friendly and fair."
She said that under the current system, where board members don't learn about the appropriations process before taking office, some clubs are unfairly excluded from funding because board members don't know the rules.
"I don't want anybody to get shafted," she said.
Reece also wants to create a council of club presidents that would convene a few times a semester to discuss event schedules and make sure that major events don't conflict, a problem she said has prevented students from becoming as involved as they would like.
Reece cites the university-wide budget cuts as the biggest challenge ASUA will face next year, but she also wants to protect club funding and push to maintain faculty and staff raises.
"If we had to make sacrifices, I'd be willing to take them out of my operating budget," Reece said.
She added that if the $3 Campus Recreation Center fee is passed in March, the senate might be able to reallocate $15,000 to help offset the cuts.
