Decisions on the allocation of funds for university programming for 22 percent of the student organizations on campus will finally be decided this week.

The Student Association finance board will re-deliberate Friday on the remaining 35 bills containing proposed funding for student groups.

‘Our challenge is to seek out additional funding and find a way to cut back on unnecessary funding,’ said Andrew Urankar, SA comptroller.

Urankar said the board will allocate the remaining $176,000 to the organizations whose bids were sent back in December.

‘We had a lot of small groups that weren’t fairly allocated money,’ Urankar said.

President of University Union Dennis Jacobs said he recognizes there is not a lot of money to go around, but he does feel UU needs $150,000 for their proposed block party.

‘$150,000 for block party was the perfect amount,’ he said. ‘It gave us leeway with our artists.’

As for Friday’s deliberations, Urankar said he thinks things will go well.

‘All of the finance board members are smart, dedicated, and they ask the right questions,’ he said. ‘I’m excited to get everyone together. I want to see this programming happen on campus.’

SA President Travis Mason was not as enthusiastic about the finance board’s impending decisions.

‘We’re going to face the same issues because we are dealing with the same procedure,’ Mason said.

Mason said, however, that he and SA Vice President Eric Crites will be putting together a task force to look at the current finance system.

‘We want finance board candidates that are knowledgeable about what they got themselves into,’ Mason said.

Jacobs said UU is waiting to see what recommendations the finance board will make on Friday.

‘We’re hoping we get our money,’ he said. ‘The longer we go without funding for block party, the less possible artists for us.’

Jacobs said, with the Grammy Awards right around the corner, any artists UU may have been looking at may raise their prices if they win any awards.

‘If an artist wins a Grammy they come with a $25,000 price tag, which puts them out of our range,’ Jacobs said.

At the SA regular assembly meeting on Monday, the assembly also approved students for positions of recorder and the final two assembly openings for The College of Arts of Sciences.

Mason also discussed plans for internal structural changes for SA including making the President in charge of heading the University Senate Student Caucus roundtable and the Vice President in charge of the Student Organizations Council.

Also, Mason hopes to define four SA committees: Academic Services, Student Services, Civic Engagement and Communications, which will be comprised of assembly members.

Mason said the purpose of this change is to get assembly members more involved in SA and to allow students who are passionate but do not necessarily want a voting voice in the assembly to participate in student government.

Mason said he will unveil his complete plan in two weeks.

Published on January 31, 2005 at 12:00 pm