The SGA plans to study the needs of the organizations it finances following years of student group complaints about the way the group disburses its increasingly sought-after funds, SGA Vice President of Finance Daozhong Jin said.
As the Student Government Association has received more requests in recent years for a static amount of money, it has become far stricter with how it funds groups, Jin said. The tighter rules, which include more documentation of the organizations’ spending, have helped make funding the most contentious issue between the SGA and student groups.
Jin said the current funding guidelines have only been tinkered with over the past 30 years, but the results of the study could significantly change the way money is awarded to student groups in the future.
The study plans to categorize the roughly 250 SGA-funded organizations into 18 groups based on how they have identified themselves to the SGA. As compared to current guidelines that uniformly apply to all groups, the study will result in a set of guidelines for each category of student group, Jin said.
Jin hopes this effort will allow the SGA to better understand how groups’ requests are dependent upon one another, as well as which requests are vital and which areas can be cut.
Black Student Union President Darla Bunting said current SGA funding rules unfairly punish student group leaders for their predecessors’ misuse of funds.
“The current executive board should not be at fault for mistakes previous ones made,” she said. “Suppose the previous exec. board wasn’t as responsible with their funding [as they should have been]. The new exec. board should not have to pay for that mistake.”
Contact reporter Alan J. McCombs at mccombsdbk@gmail.com
