The ASDVC will spend almost $142,000 next year to pay for faculty advisers and to staff the club program.
According to the Community College Education Code, all revenue from the $10 per student Student Activity Fee is available for operating the student body center under the discretion/direction of the student government.
ASDVC exercised this responsibility and on May 2, decided on the amount of funds they are willing to put towards funding an adviser position and two club member positions.
Bill Oye, dean of student life, prior to the meeting strongly stressed that “we need to have a plan in place as to how we can support clubs and ASDVC.”
This year, a new approach known as “faculty reassignment,” is being used to hire a faculty adviser.
Faculty reassignment is when rather than hiring someone, an organization buys a segment of the faculty’s time.
This method is a much cheaper approach than independently hiring someone.
In this case, ASDVC was presented the options of buying 100 percent of the particular faculty member’s time, 50 percent, or 25 percent.
With a vote of 17 favored, 6 opposed, and 3 abstaining, they have selected the option to fund a 25 percent faculty advisor for the San Ramon campus and a 50 percent advisor for the main DVC campus.
This decision will use $79,950.00 of ASDVC funds.
Francisco Hinojosa, Vice Chair of the College Council, strongly advocated choosing a 75 percent option because, “when we consider the duties of an advisor, we need someone to perform the duties involved with the position.”
However, there were also many dissenting voices on the floor.
Nick Holmes, history major and vice president of legislative affairs, advocated a multiple-advisor approach. “Having more than one opinion, and having more than one person to go to, is very important,” he said.
But Holmes did not want to dedicate such a huge portion of the funds towards funding an advisor. A more ideal approach, in Holmes’ opinion, would be to “split up duties and responsibilities, with two advisors with a 25 percent, 25 percent reassignment.”
Furthermore, ASDVC approved spending $61,916.40 to hire two classified staff positions, a coordinator and an assistant, to run the club program. The source of funding will not come from the general fund but rather will be taken from the student union building fee which every student pays at time of registration (up to $10 a year per student).
An ASDVC member will be on the hiring committee for the faculty adviser positions. The timeline for hiring will be discussed at the next meeting.
ASDVC Controller Chelsea Chung believes that there are enough reserved funds to pay for these three positions for the next three years.