The Associated Students of Michigan State University meet for the introduction of legislative action, guest speakers and various administrative subjects at the International Center in East Lansing, Michigan on Jan. 30, 2025.
The Associated Students of Michigan State University passed six bills Wednesday allocating over $40,000 to the Student Allocations Board.
The vote was not initially planned, as Wednesday's meeting was meant solely to elect a new president and a vice president of finance and operations. Typically, the only bills passed during elections are the approval of the upcoming session’s budget.
But the Office of the President decided the introduction of several bills would be necessary after the Student Allocations Board over-allocated $44,220 to multiple Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) due to "processing errors," according to the bills. The errors left the SAB without money and unable to pay promised funds to RSOs.
The bills introduced Wednesday aimed to resolve the error by moving money from other budgets into the SAB budget. Despite the bills passing, though, not all affected organizations who were promised money will receive it.
The affected RSOs were informed of this error Tuesday evening via an email from Vice President for Student Allocations Jawad Mohammed.
“After reviewing our current financial position, we have found that ASMSU has fully exhausted its Student Allocations Board (SAB) funding for the academic year,” Mohammed wrote in the email shared with The State News. “Due to significant over-allocation and ongoing budget constraints, we are no longer able to support pending or previously approved allocations. As a result, all ASMSU contracts associated with SAB funding are void.”
President Connor Le said there was an error in the spreadsheet used to track the money allocated by SAB.
“It was thought that we had more money than we thought, but instead the board was actually allocating money that currently wasn't there,” he said.
RSOs who had either pending or approved allocations within the last two weeks were the ones affected by these over-allocations, Mohammed said.
He added that since it is late into the semester, the majority of RSOs seeking funding had already put on their events and were seeking reimbursement.
ASMSU declined to share the names of the affected RSOs with The State News.
Prior to the vote, Mohammed gave a report to the GA acknowledging the error.
“I want to sincerely apologize to the groups impacted," Mohammed said. "We know how much work goes into organizing events and we recognize how frustrating this news was.”
He said that the allocations part of the six bills would restore funding for the vast majority of the affected groups. Those affected will also have future requests prioritized in the fall, he said.
The bills allocated funding from unspent areas of ASMSU’s budget from multiple departments to the SAB.
The six bills allocated money from the following areas to the Student Allocations Department:
All six bills were passed by the GA.
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