Student Association leaders said they hope to inject more responsiveness and accessibility into the student group funding process, after students at several recent Senate meetings complained the process was unfair.
The initiative comes in the wake of recent debate over next year’s SA finance bill, and a general concern about the allocation of funds to student groups, SA members said.
“A lot of groups are not comfortable with the way the funds are allocated,” SA President Carrie Potter said. “The root of the problem is: How are funds allocated?”
A four-member Student Group Liaison team has been established for the upcoming year to provide student groups more guidance during the initial application process. A monitoring system, which does not dictate groups’ actions but provides resources, will be implemented to increase communication, Potter said.
The Senate intended to pass a student group allocation bill at the April 29 Senate-elect meeting, but Potter vetoed it after “legitimate concerns” were raised, said Executive Vice President Jesse Strauss. A revised bill was passed at an emergency meeting May 7, after amendments to alter funding for a handful of student groups were tacked on to the bill.
“I am still not happy with the bill,” Potter said. “I think we compromised a lot more than we should have.”
“A lot of people saw problems in the bill,” Strauss said. “Minority groups were inadvertently totally underfunded.”
“We allocate 100 percent,” said J.P. Blackford, SA Finance Committee chair. “The number of student groups has risen, but our pot of money has not.”
Nikhil Shah, Indian Students’ Association co-president, said the SA allocated $75 to the ISA last year. He requested $1,000 for an event the ISA put on in February but only received half the amount he requested.
Shah said poor communication between the Finance Committee and student groups often leads to a dissatisfaction about the allocations.
“It’s a tragedy people do not have accurate information (about the funds),” Strauss said. “There are just puddles of money floating around.”
Potter and Strauss pointed out the SA has a surplus of funds for the 1997-98 academic year, even though student groups did not receive the amount they requested.
But Blackford said the surplus resulted from individual groups’ unused funds that reverted back to the SA account.
“We tell them `here is what you need to do’ . if they put inaccurate information, we can not do anything about it,” Blackford said.
With little information offered to them, “student groups assume they got shafted,” Potter said.
The money allocated to the co-sponsorship fund, which funds individual events held by groups, also was questioned.
The finance bill allocated about $44,000 dollars to the co-sponsorship fund. But the money is allocated for individual events, forcing student groups to apply for funding for each event.
Potter and Strauss questioned the logic behind the large amount of money in the fund because numerous student organizations complain they are under-funded.
