By Lauren Walker
Staff Writer
Students at California State University, Dominguez Hills have a student government that, according to its website at www.asicsudh.com, has core values of “promoting leadership, student rights, and growth and opportunity for students locally and statewide.” Its mission statement is to “provide educational, social and cultural activities” to enhance student life.
But what does that really mean? Well, at its most basic level, it means that Associated Students, Inc., advocates and represents nearly 15,000 students at CSUDH, puts on numerous events throughout the year and sponsors athletics, the children’s center, KDHR, multicultural affairs and the Toro Learning and Testing Center.
Every academic year each student pays $135 to ASI through the student activity fee. That’s $70 for the fall semester and $65 for the spring. These numbers have amounted to ASI’s $1.8 million budget for the 2017-18 year. According to Caithlyn Torres, vice president of finance for ASI, that figure that will increase to $1.9 million next year due to an enrollment increase.
About 60 percent of the budget goes towards students and the remaining money operates ASI.
On the website, the 2017-18 budget is available with a breakdown of all estimated expenses and expenditures. Those figures range from $300 for trash bags to $27,000 for special programs to $307,000 for staff salaries.
Those staff salaries are paid to five professional staff. They oversee the ASI corporation. The salaries are based on current salary survey trends in the CSU and their auxiliaries.
The salaries range from $45,000 for the ASI program coordinator to the nearly $92,000 earned by the executive director.
About 19 percent of student fees go towards the $307,000 salary budget of the five non-students who work with student government.
“That may sound like a lot, but other executive directors [at other CSUs] can get paid up to $100,000,” said Torres. “The budgets for those positions are high because it includes all their benefits.”
ASI’s executive director, Rasheedah Shakoor, is a CSUDH alumnus. She’s worked on campus for 10 years and has been in her current position for seven.
Shakoor said her job never gets boring because it’s a learning process since each year she works with a new ASI board. Some challenges ASI faces is that many students want more activities, however, they do not want to pay so it’s difficult to meet students’ needs, Shakoor said.
While the ASI president, who is voted by the student body each year, and its board of directors technically run ASI, Shakoor’s role is integral, as she oversees and advises the ASI board of directors. She assists with administration insurance, fiscal and financial statements, student development, personal development and payroll.
Along with wanting to plan more activities, ASI is currently trying to implement creative ways to promote itself to the general student body.
“We are looking at different ways to get students to be aware of what ASI is besides being a place to get free scantrons,” Shakoor said.
Without students, there is no campus and students have no voice, Shakoor said.
“We do as much as we can to stretch the student fee dollar in the most effective way at CSUDH but we also encourage students to provide feedback on if they want us to do something different with the student fee money that they see will impact students more effectively than it is now,” said Justin Blakely, the 2017-2018 ASI president.
