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OCC students want to preserve budget power

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For decades, there’s been an informal understanding at Orange Coast College that students get to manage hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from the bookstore, recycling center and student association fees.

Now OCC’s student government is pushing college officials to make sure that power is preserved.

“Currently there is no formal document that exists that recognizes the Associated Students as managers of these monies,” said Josh Stone, Associated Students of OCC’s vice president of fiscal affairs.

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On May 15, he and his colleagues plan to present a memorandum of understanding to the college district’s board of trustees enumerating the practice.

OCC is the only campus within the Coast Community College District where students manage college money, said Martha Parham, the district’s spokeswoman.

The district includes Coastline Community College, which has campuses in Newport Beach and Fountain Valley, and Golden West College in Huntington Beach.

It’s a “very rare” practice among community colleges, said Kristin Clark, OCC’s vice president of student services.

Last year, ASOCC crafted a budget of more than $1.3 million, a typical amount for the group, Clark said.

For about 40 years, the practice has continued based on the simple knowledge that it’s just how things are done at OCC, students say.

Each August, ASOCC’s financial services committee gets accounting training before they hash out a budget for the next school year.

After the student senate approves it and the college president vets it, the budget is submitted to Coast’s board of trustees in June for final approval.

“The whole idea of doing this originally is it was a learning experience,” Clark said.

ASOCC has worked since last semester to craft an agreement that preserves the practice in something more than institutional memory.

“It is courageous for us to come to you,” Stone said at a May 1 meeting where he and other students introduced the idea to the board of trustees. “It’s a testament of our resolve to pass on to future members of the ASOCC the same opportunities we and those before us have been afforded. What is even more courageous is that for more than 40 years, the district has extended these opportunities and the results have been outstanding.”

ASOCC’s bylaws restrict what students can fund, Clark said, noting that the intent is to improve student life outside the classroom.

Much of ASOCC’s money is spread through co-curricular activities that request the cash, such as $200,000 for athletic teams’ travel, $38,000 for OCC’s speech and debate team or $2,700 for the culinary arts team competitions.

The student government also funds its own operations out of the budget, including open events like club rush.

The largest single expense was $388,200 to fund staff in the student activities office.

Excluding a stipend for the district’s student trustee, OCC’s student government representatives do not receive compensation, Clark said.

“They are fully aware that at the end of the day, these dollars are not theirs,” Clark said.

The budget process will remain the same under the memorandum, students say, and the board of trustees will still have final power over the money.

ASOCC leaders say they just want to make sure future students get the same chance they did.

“When you give students the opportunity to step up it’s amazing what they can do,” Clark said.

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