By Jackie Hong
Students voted to pass a motion for the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) to post a detailed breakdown of its budget online during last semester’s semi-annual general meeting.
And, true to the motion, the budget for the 2014-2015 fiscal year (May 1, 2014 to April 30, 2015) is now available on the RSU’s website.
The union represents more than 28,000 full-time students at Ryerson and is funded by a portion of their tuition. The Eyeopener looked over the 18-page document and pulled out some numbers for your reading pleasure (note: 2014-2015 values are proposed budget values; “actual unaudited” expenses are figures the RSU reported but they have not been audited yet):
The 2014-2015 budget has $4,000 budgeted for travel to Canadian Federation of Students Ontario general meetings.
RSU President Rajean Hoilett is budgeted for a $28,650 salary, $4,500 in benefits, $450 in an expense account and $1,000 for special projects, which adds up to $34,600. This is $1,332 less than the actual unaudited expense for his predecessor, Melissa Palermo.
Vice-President Education Jesse Root, Vice-President Equity Pascale Diverlus, Vice-President Operations Dora Adobea and Vice President Student Life and Events Saphi Subendran each have $33,600 budgeted towards their total expenses for 2014-2015.
The total proposed executive expense for 2014-2015 is $169,000; during the 2013-2014 fiscal year, the RSU proposed $169,750 but reported that it actually spent $172,088.
The Graduate Council spent $5,568 on “Orientation Wine and Cheese” in 2013-2014, which is $568 more than proposed and $2,219 more than in 2011-2012.
There’s $5,000 budgeted for it this fiscal year.
Last year the RSU earned a total of $173,797 in revenue at copyRITE printing. Which they own, in case you were wondering.
The RSU gave out $69,142 in bursaries, awards and charitable donations last fiscal year.
Infographic by Farnia Fekri, using infogr.am. Data from the RSU and Ryerson. Price of food items from Metro grocery store and LCBO.
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