In the spring Srikanth Reddy, then a member of the Student Activities Finance Board, ran against two Executive Committee members in a heated race for executive vice president. During his campaign, Reddy said student group programming would benefit from stronger knowledge of the SAFB funding process.
Associated Student Government senators will vote tonight on a bill co-written by Reddy and Financial Vice President Carson Kuo that would expand SAFB’s powers to include not only deciding the amount of funding A-status groups receive, but their ability to receive funds altogether.
Both Reddy and Kuo have said the bill would streamline student groups’ involvement with ASG by giving each group only one adviser.
“One of the things I set out to do was to improve the efficiency of the student group advising system,” said Reddy, a McCormick junior.
Reddy’s top competitor last spring, Art Janik, said he sees benefits to the proposed system.
“By separating A-status groups, Executive Committee will be able to devote more attention to the B-status groups,” said Janik, former president of the B-status group Polish American Student Alliance.
Although many student group leaders have praised the proposed system for its efficiency, some have said they are concerned about increasing SAFB’s power over A-status groups.
Janik, a December Medill graduate and Fall Quarter columnist for The Daily, said he is concerned that SAFB members will have a conflict of interest during funding after helping with programming.
“Usually SAFB is supposed to make funding recommendations on a blind basis, looking only at financing,” Janik said. “Now that they’re taking on an advising role, how are they going to keep their system of looking at hard numbers separate from programming?”
While SAFB does not help A-status groups with their funding petitions, it does examine the group as a whole during funding, Reddy said.
“When you fund a group, you fund it based on the merit of the group,” Reddy said. “If you work really closely with the group you’re there to see your group succeed. If that wasn’t the case, you’d have a group that oversaw funding but didn’t help with programming at all. The two go hand in hand.”
The proposed system already exists informally, Reddy said.
But Spring 2001 executive vice presidential candidate and former Executive Committee member Hisham Zaid said combining funding and programming advisors is problematic.
“If you want to move the responsibility of the Executive Committee, you better guarantee that you can help (student groups) move on and learn from mistakes,” said Zaid, a McCormick senior.
Adding two SAFB members and training present members to assume the Executive Committee’s duties to A-status groups would ensure SAFB’s advising effectiveness, Reddy said.
“Having each account executive only responsible for three student groups would ensure that they could function successfully within their dual role,” Reddy said.
If senators pass the bill tonight by the required two-thirds majority, the changes will take effect next year.
And only time will tell if A-status groups truly benefit from the changes, Janik said.
“The major con (to the bill) would be if SAFB can’t reorganize themselves to balance those roles,” Janik said. “That’s when there may be some trouble for A-status groups.”
