The University of Missouri’s Asian American Association is grappling with budget complications this semester as a result of officer stipend cuts and vague communication from the university.
The AAA receives an annual budget from the university, which is divided between AAA and its seven umbrella organizations to fund events. Typically, Mizzou also provides annual stipends for AAA’s executive officers separate from the budget.
“This year, our stipend, [the university is] making us take it out of the budget, so that’s mainly where the cuts are coming from,” AAA vice president Rebecca Delano said.
Delano and AAA’s other executive officers elected for stipends that were five times less than last year’s in order to preserve the budget.
Senior Katie Tien is the president of Alpha Phi Gamma, AAA’s Asian-American-interest sorority. She has experienced frustration when trying to get budget requests for events approved.
“It does take a lot of time to plan these things,” Tien said. “Something that I’m very proud of AAA [for] is that we plan ahead of time, like really ahead of time, and we’re very on top of planning, and so for us to be told at the very last minute that ‘It doesn’t matter what you planned, [the university doesn’t] have the money for it,’ it’s very frustrating.”
As a result of these budget proposal rejections, officers have had to redesign certain events in order to attract new members.
“Some of the events have had to be budgetless as well,” Delano said. “It definitely takes a lot more creativity and a lot more thought being put into it.”
AAA’s treasurer, senior Nikki Mosqueda, facilitates funding requests between the organization’s seven umbrella organizations and AnDrea Jackson, Mizzou’s assistant director of Student Resource Centers, who then forwards them to an unknown administrator for approval.
According to Mosqueda, AAA officers were told by Jackson they have no direct access to the person controlling their budget and stipends. For her, communication from Student Affairs has been unusually slow, worse still for other identity-based groups.
“Every single year, we receive our annual budget, like, first week of August,” Mosqueda said. “And so I emailed [Student Affairs] the first week of August being like, ‘Hey, how much money do we get this year?’ And then they didn’t know until, like, end of August.”
This lack of urgency on Mizzou’s part has resulted in several organizations’ officers having to pay out of pocket to fund start-of-year events.
Unificasian is AAA’s annual start-of-year event, and despite having sent in a budget request in mid-August, and routinely checking in for updates, Mosqueda did not receive a decision until two days before the event was scheduled to occur.
According to Mosqueda, the university’s concerns that the event title, was exclusionary to certain races and identities resulted in the denial of AAA’s budget request.
In the end, AAA paid out of pocket for the entire event. According to Mosqueda, this personal spending by FSA’s officers cannot be reimbursed by the university, and instead must be raised through independent fundraising events.
“I feel like it’s very unfair because me and the rest of AAA and the rest of its under-orgs and all the other umbrella orgs, we’re trying to communicate and give [Student Resource Centers] everything as quickly as we can,” Mosqueda said. “But they aren’t giving the same, like, efficiency as we’re giving them.”
While working to resolve these communication issues, AAA hopes to explore other avenues of receiving funding.
“Last year, AAA did get some donations from the College of Education, so we’re just going to be reaching out to all the departments here and the Asian Affairs Center,” Mosqueda said. “We have an Asian Christian Fellowship as one of the other orgs, so they’ll reach out to churches. So we’re just going to go literally everywhere we can to try and get donations or extra funding or whatever. There’s really not much else we could do.”
AAA is willing to go to such lengths to keep their organization financially stable because it provides an essential community for students on campus.
“AAA was the first org that I joined because I wanted to feel closer to my heritage in a way, and also bond with other people that obviously looked like me and I feel like had the same experiences as well,” Delano said.
As with most student organizations at Mizzou, money can be what enables engagement and allows them to maintain a prominent presence on campus. AAA remains dedicated to their mission of maintaining Asian culture on campus, and for Tien, that mission is more important than a lack of funding.
“The reason why the university gives us money is because they think our purpose as an organization is important, and that is what continues to drive us to make sure that this money does come through at the very end of the day,” Tien said.
The university declined to comment at this time.
