In a sharp contrast from the its fiscal situation last year at this time, the Student Association is much less strapped for cash coming into fall semester.

Thanks to the new co-curricular fee and cost-cutting measures that were implemented throughout this year, SA Comptroller Erin Maghran said that things should be able to return to normal by the time classes begin.

“Everything is right on schedule,” said Maghran, a sophomore public policy, public relations and political science major.

She said that SA has successfully refilled its reserve fund, which will enable student groups to keep half of the proceeds from events they hold. Although this is usually the norm, it was suspended during this year because of a severe lack of funds that were available for distribution, Maghran said.

This year’s Finance Board allocations, which were approved at Monday’s SA meeting, attempted to avoid neglecting any student groups that have grown accustomed to a certain level of funding, Maghran said, while also trying to fund events that have not received a lot of attention before, such as the Muslim Student Association’s Islamic Week.

Some groups, such as University Union’s Speaker Board, applied for several events but only received the OK on a portion of them. Although they received all but $655.90 of their $39,673.15 request to bring Major League Baseball legend Hank Aaron to speak, their requests for Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife Coretta Scott King, actor and activist Christopher Reeves and self-proclaimed “B-Movie” stalwart Bruce Campbell were denied.

Together the three denied requests totaled about $117,000. Maghran also said that all of the speakers who were denied will still be considered for a later date.

Although the board always took all of their requests seriously, UU Speaker Board Coordinator Blythe Copeland said that they were happy that their top choice will be speaking at SU next semester.

“We were looking into all the shows but we are definitely happy with what we got,” said Copeland, a junior magazine major.

She said the reversion to splitting proceeds from events will not affect the board’s initial plans because she only came into the position this year when the cost-cutting procedures were being implemented.

Muslim Student Association member Jennifer Ismat said that overall her group is happy with the amount of funding that it received, which included the funding of a speaker for whom the SA denied funding this semester.

“In general, it is better because we got more funding than last semester,” she said. “But we could always use more money.”

Published on April 24, 2002 at 12:00 pm