When the Student Activity Fee Board voted to give UPUA and the Graduate Student Association a percentage of the activity fee, the move brought both student governments closer to being in line with their Big Ten peers.
The University Park Undergraduate Association will run on a budget of about $55,000 this school year, broken down into $19,000 from the University Park Allocation Committee and a one-time-only stopgap allocation of $36,800 from Student Affairs.
Most other Big Ten student governments spend almost $100,000 annually, and some spend much more.
It seems likely UPUA will have a substantially larger budget next year, as the student government is seeking about $250,000 of activity fee money -- about 5 percent of the activity fee paid by undergraduates -- to run its Tenant-Landlord Mediation Center and start a legal services program, UPUA President Gavin Keirans said recently.
At Michigan State, the Associated Students of Michigan State University (ASMSU) determines the school's equivalent of an activity fee, called the student tax. The tax is currently set at $16.75 per semester, bringing in $1.3 to $1.5 million annually, ASMSU Chairman of the Student Assembly Mike Webber said.
About $400,00 of that money is given to two separate funding boards for distribution to student organizations, and ASMSU controls the remainder, Webber said.
With the leftover money, ASMSU funds free legal services for students, as well as the student yearbook, which is also free to students.
At Ohio State, Undergraduate Student Government President Peter Koltak said his group works with about $200,000 annually, a number that includes money from the student activity fee as well as an endowment from the university's contract with Coca-Cola.
Koltak mentioned one of his group's primary projects as an off-campus student resource fair it sponsored to educate students about the intricacies of living off-campus.
At the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Student Association (MSA) receives a cut of the student services fee, which is doled out by a board similar to UPAC. MSA President Mark Nagel said his group has a budget of about $170,000 this year and will grant about $54,000 of that to student groups that weren't eligible to receive fee money directly.
Nagel said MSA pays for a late-night taxi service for students and sponsors a community service concert where students have to put in 10 hours of community service to get a ticket. Last year, Minnesota students logged more than 30,000 hours of community service for the concert, Nagel said.
At the University of Iowa, the University of Iowa Student Government (UISG) dispenses about $1.5 million of activity fee money, including about $500,000 in fixed annual costs for itself and a budget of about $100,000. The fixed costs run a substantial amount because of the legal service the group runs, as well as the loan payback for the school's radio station. The UISG also pays for a newspaper readership program, which provides free newspapers to students, and covers the costs to bring speakers and performers to campus.
Ultimately, Keirans believes student government at a school as large as Penn State requires a budget that reflects the size of the student body.
"To be an effective student government on a campus so large, as many of the Big Ten schools are, you really need the funds to reach that massive body of students," he said. "To do big things, you need the funds to make those a reality. Having this type of budget to operate from will really allow us to have that visibility."
