On Wednesday, May 5, the Associated Students of Whitworth University (ASWU) voted to approve the budget for the 2021-2022 academic year, making cuts to ASWU salaries, media budgets, programming and more.  Amending the budget is an annual task for the ASWU team, according to current president Parker Daniels.

“Amending the budget is important because each year minimum wage goes up in Washington and enrollment numbers at Whitworth change.  . . . We have to figure out how to effectively spend our budget in ways that make Whitworth an equitable environment that helps students in line with our mission statement,” Daniels said.

These rising numbers make the budget a unique challenge every year, but this year especially was challenging.

“The budget slowly started to dwindle because of that rise in minimum wage, so we ended up pulling money from programming and salaries,” Daniels said.

One specific point of contention in this year’s deliberations was the decision to cut bus passes, which was eventually reversed due to widespread outcry from the student body. Daniels said the decision to cut bus passes was a last resort. 

“After all was said and done, we included bus passes, but we ended up being $54,000 in the hole.  So, after looking at a bunch of different options, we decided to cut bus passes,” Daniels said.

Many students reacted negatively to the news of no more bus passes next year, which took the ASWU budget committee back to the drawing board. Eventually, according to Daniels, bus passes were reinstated, and other sacrifices were made. 

“We decided to look at our mission statement, which mentions creating an equitable environment for students, and bus passes help us do that.  We didn’t want to pull any more money from programming since we’re in a rebuilding year next year, so we . . . decided to take cuts from other areas,” Daniels said.

With this important amendment to continue bus passes, this past Wednesday all 18 voting ASWU members voted in favor of the budget, according to the minutes from that meeting.

Daniels is hopeful that the new and improved budget will continue to serve students next year. 

“As things start to open up, ASWU’s always going to be looking to serve our students as best as we can, listen to our students as best we can and put on the best programming that we can.  We want both this past year’s incoming class and next year’s incoming class to enjoy a more normal college experience,” Daniels said.

To learn more about ASWU, log on to https://www.whitworthaswu.com/