After about a year of toil over the Finance Board budget process, smaller student organizations are still looking for ways to get the most out of their proposals without collaborating with other groups.

But with limited funding, the Finance Board is only able to allocate approximately one-third of the funds requested by student groups. The bulk of the budget is divided among larger organizations, such as Hillel and University Union.

According to many organizations, including UU, in order for each group to gain the maximum benefit of the student fee, changes must be made. Until such changes are initiated by the Student Association, however, organizations are forced to get creative in the way they obtain funding.

Sherlen Archibald, a member of the Finance Board and co-chair of UU Concerts, suggested groups learn to collaborate on the events they sponsor.

‘I would recommend for student groups to start co-sponsoring and start working with a lot of other organizations,’ Archibald said. ‘There’s not enough (money) to go around.’

Last semester the Finance Board suggested that Asian Students in America, the Korean American Student Association and Masti: the South Asian Dance and Cultural Organization collaborate on their event because they all represented Asian cultures.

Stefanie Lee, the former co-secretary of KASA, said she was shocked to hear her group would be forced to collaborate with others.

‘I guess we were surprised. We submitted (to the Finance Board), but we also got most of the funding,’ Lee said.

Archibald said it was a misunderstanding as to why the Finance Board recommended the groups collaborate with each other.

‘People have to understand it wasn’t because they were all Asian groups. We looked at the descriptions of who they wanted to work with and found it overlapped,’ Archibald said.

Billy Kim, president of KASA, refused to comment on the issue, but in December he said he found the Finance Board’s decision ‘insulting.’

‘They’re asking three different Asian organizations to collaborate, but they aren’t asking other organizations to do this,’ he said.

Regardless of the reason why KASA and other groups were asked to collaborate on their event, the sentiment within the groups remained that if it had not been for UU, they would have received more funding.

‘It’s understandable that small organizations are upset. We are all trying to obtain the same goal,’ said Adam Gorode, co-chair of UU Concerts.

Dennis Jacobs, president of UU, said students must realize that UU’s job is to provide the large-scale programming that students want to see.

‘It’s no secret that we take a huge chunk from the budget,’ Jacobs said.

Jacobs said in the past UU has used its large funding to help smaller groups get their events off the ground. He said he is always open to working with smaller groups.

‘I’ve been to a lot of smaller events, and one thing I would strongly suggest is co-sponsorship,’ Jacobs said. ‘(UU) would like to work hand-in-hand with smaller groups.’

But Jacobs said that seeking co-sponsorship is not the only outlet for under-funded student organizations to get their event up and running. Collaboration with similar groups is vital, he said.

‘There’s a huge difference between co-sponsorship and collaboration,’ Jacobs said. ‘It’s tough when you submit a budget and don’t get funding.’

Archibald said the Finance Board has been working with student groups to show the importance of collaboration through mixers in which students can collaborate and communicate ways in which to get more people to their events.

‘The goal of the Finance Board is to tell organizations we give priority to student organizations that collaborate,’ Archibald said. ‘There’s not enough money to go around, and there are a lot of chances for organizations to work together.’

Lee was reluctant to open up to the idea of collaboration in KASA’s next budget proposal.

‘Groups should remain independent because that’s why they were formed in the first place,’ she said.

Lee said instead of suggesting at the SA assembly budget meeting that KASA collaborate with other groups, the Finance Board should have gone to each group individually.

‘If groups want to work independently, then they should,’ she said.

Gorode said he originally came from a smaller student organization and he knows how hard it can be to obtain the necessary funding. But until changes are made, he said, settling for a collaborative effort is the best anyone can hope for.

‘It can’t happen all at once,’ he said. ‘The way things are now, it’s preventing programming on either side.’

For the future, Archibald suggested groups make improvements in the way they write budget proposals to the finance board.

Regardless of how proposals are submitted, if UU and other groups seem to have come to a consensus that, after more than a year of conflict in the budget process, the way SA and the Finance Board function must be changed.

‘The tone is being set now that something needs to happen,’ Gorode said.

Published on February 16, 2005 at 12:00 pm