A projected drop in fall semester enrollment may create problems for the Government of the Student Body as it tries to create a budget in the spring for student organizations.

Although the official fall semester enrollment numbers will not be made public until mid-September, a decrease from last year is likely, said Kathy Jones, registrar.

“Enrollment will be down [this fall], and that’s been projected all along,” Jones said.

That enrollment decrease will affect GSB’s primary duty of appropriating funds to student groups, said GSB Vice President William Rock.

“The biggest impact is going to be on the budget because every student pays student activity fees that we get,” Rock said.

With fewer students enrolled this year, less money in student activity fees will be collected and GSB will have less money to allocate to student groups next spring.

Full-time students pay $171 per semester in student activity fees, of which $28.50 goes to GSB to distribute to more than 100 student groups.

Last March, GSB had nearly $400,000 less than what was requested by student groups, resulting in cuts to several groups’ budgets. Substantial cuts may be faced again this coming spring not only because of the possible enrollment drop, but also because of a probable increase in groups requesting GSB funding, Rock said.

GSB Finance Director Kristi Kramer said with a drop in enrollment and a resultant drop in student fees, GSB may also be hit when trying to serve student groups who need help outside of the regular allocations process.

Student groups who were created after the regular allocations process, groups who missed regular allocations or groups who were funded through the regular allocations process but afterwards had to deal with an unforeseen expense can go through a special projects allocation process, Kramer said.

The money GSB has to fund groups through special allocations comes in large part from money unspent by student organizations, which GSB takes back, she said.

“All money not spent by clubs at the end of the fiscal year goes into what we call ‘the pot,’ which then can be moved into different accounts [within GSB],” Kramer said.

The issue that arises here, Kramer said, is when GSB has less money to give to student groups during the regular allocations process, clubs will usually spend more of the money allotted to them, leaving less unspent money for GSB to put back in “the pot.”

“When clubs get less money, they will spend more of it, and then there is less money we can take back. It seems like that’s going to be the cycle for a while,” Kramer said.

Most student groups that applied for GSB funding last spring didn’t receive everything they hoped for, a fact that Gary Schmalz, a staff member for ISU Campus Crusade for Christ, keeps in mind when analyzing his own groups’ budget cuts. His group faced a relatively significant cut, leaving the group’s budget at $1,992.40, when they had $2,854.60 available to them the previous year.

“We just feel like the university has been very gracious with their funding because we understand the budget pinch they are in,” Schmalz said. “Everybody’s budget was cut, we were cut — it’s understandable.”

Schmalz said his group can get by on a shoestring budget as long as it has manpower available. However, groups that rely upon GSB funding for such things as travel costs feel more of an impact when their money is cut.

Another group challenged by decreased GSB funding is Black Student Alliance, which received $4,353.18 last March — half the $8,735.40 it received a year before.

The group represents Iowa State in the Big 12 Council on Black Student Government, which requires it to take four trips to meetings of the council, said Black Student Alliance President Shelley Whitehead. But after GSB’s cuts to its budget, the club must pay for three of the four trips out of its own funds.

Whitehead said that the group will put on fund-raisers and seek a sponsorship this year, but because GSB funding is such a substantial part of the alliance’s budget, she is concerned about what the group might face next spring when GSB builds its next budget.

“Now they cut out a significant part of [the essence of our group], and we’ll be in a world of trouble if they cut more,” she said.