Editor’s note: This story has been updated to fix the name of “University Budget Committee”.
Saegis Abbott is a graduate student studying mechanical engineering who is running for the Student Fee Committee Chair. He currently serves as an at-large member for the SFC. ASOSU elections went live last week and close on Feb. 28.
Abbott mentioned that some of his main goals for being SFC Chair are to be fiscally responsible, eliminate politicization and acquire more donors to fund university programs.
“(It’s) really cool to see something that students see as important. Alumni, when they graduate, are willing to donate back to and so that’s where I’m like, okay, let’s look at the programs that we have, the programs that people are willing to donate into. Maybe those programs are the ones that we should grow,” said Abbott.
Having more donors contribute to funding parts of OSU would help offset costs that the student fees wouldn’t be able to cover completely on its own. Abbott explained that the Chair of the SFC also sits on the University Budget Committee which is where he will share this input.
In addition to his interest in bringing more donors to OSU, Abbott wants general transparency in the SFC and more student engagement in meetings. Abbott explained that he is working towards making information available for all students and making sure that he is accessible for anyone to ask questions.
By having more present student voices, Abbott would keep fiscal responsibility in the SFC by spending money where the students want it to be spent. Student wages and student tickets were brought up as well.
“The way I approach (student wages) is like, hey, let’s do it unit by unit,” Abbott said. He explained that each unit of student workers could increase their student wages based on revenue streams rather than increasing student fees.
“If students want something, let’s try to make it happen, but let’s make it proportionally representative to the number of students that actually want that,” Abbott said in regard to student tickets.
Student tickets were a topic of contention during the most recent SFC budget deliberations. Abbott says that he wants to be more fiscally responsible with how much money is going to student tickets. If there are more tickets set aside than are actually used at sporting events, he talked about reducing the budget for tickets to more accurately represent what is used.
Focusing funding for critical resources at OSU such as mental health, basic needs, and family resources are important to Abbott in order to enable people to continue their education at OSU.
“I don’t run for student government to do what I want to do. I run for student government to do what the students want me to do,” Abbott said.
