Wednesday night’s spring funding appeals were less “acrimonious” than in previous years, according to SAFC Chair Malavika Srinivasan. The appeals process is the annual portion of an ASG Senate meeting in which student groups get to ask for more, or less, money than the Student Appropriations and Finance Committee originally allocated them.
Speaker of the Senate Samir Pendse gave each A-status group the chance to motion to increase or decrease its funding. Debate followed and then the Senate voted. According to participants, the process went smoothly; only a handful of motions were rejected or amended. Srinivasan said the process was easy due to SAFC accounting executives “working very closely with student groups” before the meeting to come up with appeal requests that both parties could support.
Many of the night’s changes were direct or indirect products of SAFC’s “tier” system of funding. According to SAFC member Jeff Cao, in their initial proposals, student groups give SAFC a number of base amounts of money that correspond to certain levels and caliber of programming, and SAFC chooses one tier amount to give. In its original recommendations, SAFC often deems one tier too high and goes with the tier below. In the appeals process, though, groups can lobby to get an amount between these two tiers, and they often get the support of SAFC.
College Feminists, for example, received $1,600 in 2008 for its Sex Week programming. This year, though, the group set its lowest tier for Sex Week funding at $3,500. SAFC thought this number was too high, but since it was the lowest tier, SAFC’s only other option was to offer no money for Sex Week. College Feminists asked on Wednesday night for $1,600, an amount that wasn’t one of its original tier markings, but one behind which SAFC could throw its support. The request passed quickly though the Senate. Many of the appeals (especially the ones that passed easily) were of this nature.
In the biggest funding changes of the night, A&O Productions and College Democrats, already the first and third highest-funded groups, respectively, each netted an additional $5000.
College Democrats originally asked for an additional $9,000 to the fall speaker honorarium fund, which now has $3,500 (the fund specifically for paying a speaker to come to campus in the fall). College Democrats President Jordan Fein said the funding increase was warranted because of the success of Fall 2008’s Wesley Clark event. Fein said he thought the group was being punished for bringing Clark in that SAFC was only considering the amount the group paid (rather than the amount they were originally allotted) as a base from which to recommend an increase. He also said the group has been trying to work its way back up in funding ever since a former president incurred a financial citation from SAFC which caused the group to lose some funding.
The College Dems had to push their bid all the way down to $2,500 before the request was voted through. At the end of proceedings, Fein asked for, and received, another $2,500 to bring the total to $5,000, even though his original $5,000 request was rejected. “I think it was just a miscommunication,” Fein said. “People didn’t really know that the [SAFC] as a whole supported that $5,000 increase.” Srinivasan spoke up in support of the second $2,500.
In the other large increase of the night, A&O Productions got $5,000 for its “blowout” fall event honorarium. “We’re really happy,” said A&O Financial Director Sebastian Rodriguez, though he initially asked for $6,500. “It’s actually a rarity that we have to come in to Senate and appeal for a little extra money.”
With a sold-out Fall event and popular programming throughout the year, Rodriguez had a lot of ammunition for his argument for $6,500, a bigger increase than last year. But SAFC members and senators were wary to give the group, whose funding already easily eclipses that of any other group, everything it wanted.
Despite general good humor, there were some heated exchanges. For Members Only received an additional $1,250 of funding, but didn’t get its biggest request, $2,000 for the Spring honorarium. SAFC members cited the stagnant attendance (of about 300) of the event over the past two years. And though this year’s FMO spring event, a Solange Knowles concert, may have helped to attract prospective students, and especially African-American prospective students, the SAFC maintained that it didn’t make recommendations based on “cause” but rather on past attendance of the group’s events, the group’s planning for future events and its communication with SAFC itself.