By: Roy Aker

The main goal of University of Minnesota student group Students for a Democratic Society this fall semester will be trying to enact the three points of its proposed referendum.

The referendum, which included a 10 percent pay cut to any administrator making more than $200,000, passed with 85.5 percent of the few thousand students who voted.

In his response to SDS’s referendum, President Eric Kaler said in an April letter to the editor that cutting “salaries and benefits while retaining or attracting capable people to manage a $3 billion organization is unrealistic.”

SDS officer Nick Brambilla disagrees.

“Governor [Mark] Dayton’s salary is less than $200,000 a year; we don’t believe the president of a public institution should be making so much money,” he said.

Kaler’s salary, including bonuses, in fiscal year 2012 was $610,000, according to University data.

The University is “one of the worst in the country for administrative bloat,” Brambilla said, referencing a December Wall Street Journal article about the University’s administrative bloat.

Brambilla said he and another SDS officer sat down with Kaler in April to talk about the referendum.

In the referendum, SDS calls for University administration to “fully disclose the budget in April, prior to any decisions to raise tuition or fees.”

In his letter, Kaler said the budget is already transparent.

The budget he presents to the Board of Regents, he said, is publicly available online, and is usually expected before the end of June. 

SDS member Christopher Getowicz said in an April letter to the editor that Kaler is “wrong in his assumption that transparency means a public budget presented before the Board of Regents.”

In the letter, Getowicz said he’d like to see students share in the process of review and critique before final decisions are made.

Because SDS’s referendum holds no actual law-making power, Brambilla said enacting the points of the referendum will be difficult.

“These referendums aren’t binding by the Board of Regents or the administration,” he said.

Brambilla said SDS plans on bringing together other groups, like the Minnesota Student Association, on what he said is a “unifying issue” this fall.

“Hopefully we can start a bigger student movement,” he said, “to try to make our University a good example for the rest of the country.”

For more on administrative reactions to the referendum, pick up Wednesday’s Daily.