Universal Knights: How to Blow $200,000 on a Field Trip to an Amusement Park

On Monday March 14^th, of this year the Darfur Awareness Organization went before the Conference Registration and Travel Committee of the student senate to request funding for a conference to Washington D.C.  The organization needed funds to be able to send four UCF students to a conference to help train them to be anti-genocide activists.  As the organization donates all the money it collects to Invisible Children, a charity that helps provide clean water, education, and other essentials to children in a war torn region, they especially needed the financial assistance that the SGA could provide.  Despite asking for less than a tenth of what is often allocated to other organizations to send far fewer of its members to conference, the SGA tabled their request indefinitely.  Why?  Well the CRT committee had stopped reviewing bills because they were pretty much broke.

Despite the heavy promotion made by SGA about the $17 million from the Activity and Service Fee it has available to allocate, only a small fraction goes to student groups.  Last year out of the $15 million in the account only about 6% of the funds were allocated to student groups for events, conferences, and materials.  Although the Activity and Service Fee funds large expenses for such mainstays as the Student Union and the Recreation and Wellness Center, it also maintains its fair share of frivolous spending.  Case in point: the $200,000 field trip/giveaway of student funds to a major corporation/SGA moneygasm established in the 36^th student senate, also known as Universal Knights.

Corporate Moneygasm!  This is what "Fiscal Responsibility" looks like.

Signed, appropriately enough, on Halloween night 2003, Resolution 32-03 Universal Knights Spring Event established this yearly contribution to the poor, starving NBCUniversal Studio corporation.  This resolution provided students the opportunity to “share in the benefits of our unique living experience in Central Florida” by sending these overwhelmingly privileged young adults to an amusement park they could afford on their parents money anyway.  In short, the resolution provides the mandate for SGA to buy tickets from Universal Studios with student money and then give them to other students, despite the fact that the event is not on campus, does not raise the profile of UCF in any meaningful way, or provide any sort of cultural, educational, and/or civic benefit to students.  Also despite the large number of tickets that are bought from student fees and then redistributed (communism!), the amount of tickets are limited.  This means that this A&SF funded event is technically not open to all UCF students, which could possibly be construed as an illegal use of such funding according to state law.

SGA: Redistributing the Wealth, for Good of Motherland

This Thursday the student senate will have a special session from 18:00 to 23:00 hours to review and approve the Activity and Service Fee budget.  This year the Activity and Service Fee Committee has requested $180,000 for the line item “Spring Event” (ie. Universal Knights).  Unfortunately, it’s highly unlikely that student senate will act on their own to stop this childishly irresponsible splurging of your money, especially when you consider that SGA members have Universal Knights tickets specially reserved for them.  However, that doesn’t mean that this can’t be stopped.  There will be an open forum at the beginning, as in all senate meetings, for students to come to and voice their displeasure about this or any other aspect of the budget.  You can also contact your college senators at http://www.ucfsga.com/find-your-senator, and let them know this is the sort of wasteful spending that is remembered at the ballot box.  We here at the Vanguard Voice feel that this $180,000 would be much better spent on UCF events, student research, civic engagement, etc. and strongly encourage our reader to make such sentiments clear to everyone in SGA.