Speaking of finances, there’s something worrisome about the way the Student Activities Finance Board distributes money to student groups.

Currently, SAFB divvies up its nearly $800,000 budget among Northwestern’s 45 A-status student groups according to the success of their events. If a group’s speakers draw sell-out crowds, it is rewarded with more money. If its events flop, its budget takes the hit.

It’s a good policy in that it keeps student groups on their toes and encourages them to attract the best speakers SAFB money can buy.

But it’s not the fairest policy because it traps less successful groups into a vicious cycle. One bad year can devastate an otherwise popular student group.

This was the case with black student alliance For Members Only last week when SAFB slashed the group’s 2005-06 budget by 56 percent. Similarly, College Republicans had their budget for the same period cut by 54 percent.

But a 50-percent budget cut is crippling to any organization. And it makes it that much harder to hold better events the following year.

There are other problems with the way SAFB distributes funds. In many ways, attendance at events are out of student groups’ hands. Sometimes many popular events fall on the same night, splitting the crowds. Better planning assistance for groups from Associated Student Government might avert such problems.

No group should have to deal with such erratic alterations of its budget. In the future, SAFB should assign more importance to groups’ success over the course of several years to determine how much money to allocate.