The Union Activities Board is broke and there are disputes over why that may be.

According to UAB treasurer Jeff Moan, this year the UAB has a budget of $430,897 and part of that comes from the $15.13 fee students are charged each year to support UAB.

This semester the UAB has put on two major events, Friday Fest and the Ludacris concert.  The Ludacris concert cost them $35,000 and Friday Fest cost $90,000.

With $125,000 of their budget gone, plus the fees they have to pay every year, not much of the budget is left to plan events for the rest of the year.

Moan said last year the board had to take control of the campus cinema, which they had never had to do in the past. The UAB currently spends $51,000 on stipends for cinema staff and concessions, which takes up a large part of the budget. When compared to the cost of Ludacris it is enough money to put on another large event.

This year’s free concert is not something students can expect to happen more in the future. The Air Force Reserve went to UAB and pitched them the idea of the concert and paid for what UAB could not cover. Without the Air Force Reserve such a high profile concert would have never happened, according to Moan.

Despite questions about how wise it was to have the concert he UAB feels great about the turnout and reactions to it.

“Anytime I think you can shove 7,000 students in a 60 year old building for a concert is incredible, even if you don’t like Ludacris I think the energy you could feel in that coliseum was just incredible,” Will Lamb, UAB president, said.

Byron Smith, a junior in business administration said the Ludacris concert was “unbelievable.”

“If they had more things like that I would attend more often,” Smith said.

Smith said he approves of UAB’s event planning, but said it could be better if they charged students to attend the events.

“Students could easily pay $5 to attend an event that is right here on campus,” Smith said.

But UAB does not feel the same.

“We are not a revenue producing organization,” said Moan.

Moan said one of UAB’s missions is to not charge for any events and he thinks that it has gone well considering the economy.

Victoria Johanningsmeier, a junior in psychology, said she thinks UAB has always done a good job with activities.

“Being a student organization, I think it is good students put in effort…it does take a lot of work,” Johanningsmeier said.

UAB officials said they think they are spending their money as efficiently as they can and providing activities for a wide variety of students.

Lamb said, “We have a pretty good idea of what kind of money we are going to spend, we kind of use those sort of things as guidelines for what we are doing.”

Caleb Fernandez, a sophomore in business administration, said he is concerned about events planned for next semester.

“I feel like [UAB] does everything at the beginning of the year then everything fizzles out and it is hard to get excited about second semester events,” Fernandez said.

UAB officials said they have things planned for second semester like the Pan-African event and the Psych college tour.

Lamb said he knows it is hard to appeal to every student on campus.

“We have what like 33,000 students on this campus and that’s a lot of people…you can’t make them all happy, right?” Lamb said.

Lamb also said the rumors about them having absolutely no money left are false.

“People say we don’t have any money left but that’s not really true. We are paying for salaries, the committee chairs and executive board are paid stipends, and each committee has its own budget,” Lamb said.

Moan said he agrees that the UAB is spending their money wisely and the student body should not worry.

“Do we spend our money efficiently? Yes. Money is not wasted around here,” Moan said.