During this year’s Student Activities Finance Committee Spring Funding process, a total of $928,669 was allocated to Northwestern’s 33 A-status student groups and three co-sponsorships.
A&O received the most funding, $266,066.
The funding allocations were finalized at Wednesday night’s Associated Student Government Senate meeting. Last week, SAFC distributed copies of its funding recommendations to senators. The committee recommendations totaled $893,613, though the groups together requested $1,381,604.50.
Senate consisted of a cut round followed by an add round, during which Speaker Tyris Jones, a Weinberg sophomore, read through the list of groups. Senators could motion to cut funds from a group or to add to certain items using funds from the $55,450 Senate amendment pool.
At the end of the funding process, senators voted to add $35,056 to the original SAFC recommendations to groups.
ASG will distribute the remaining $20,394 among the same groups during the supplemental funding process in the fall, said Financial Vice President Emma Kerr, a Weinberg junior.
Groups that were awarded additional funds through motions made during the add round included For Members Only, Hillel Cultural Life, Students for Ecological and Environmental Development, Northwestern Community Development Corps, African Students Association, Muslim-cultural Student Association, Asian Pacific American Coalition and South Asian Student Alliance.
Alternative Student Breaks and Niteskool Productions motioned for additional funding but were denied. ASB’s request for additional money for their pre-Wildcat Welcome trip was denied because the trip is for only incoming freshmen and not the entire student body, SAFC members said. ASB’s request for additional funds for transportation for other trips was denied because the attendance of the trips has not increased enough to merit funding beyond last year’s level. Niteskool was the only group in the spring funding process that received no funding in the original SAFC recommendations or as an additional Senate allocation.
Niteskool President and Weinberg junior Lynn Stransky spoke in favor of her group receiving $7,000 to bring a concert to campus in the spring. Kerr and former Financial Vice President Malavika Srinivasan spoke against the allocation. Srinivasan, a SESP senior, said the funding was not awarded because of “concerns about the stability of the organization” and a financial misconduct citation Niteskool received for not putting on a planned event.
Kerr said there is a “question about the longevity of the group” because it has yet to transition to its new executive board, a process SAFC recommends groups complete by mid-April each year.
SAFC makes funding recommendations based on a group’s “merit,” Kerr said. Merit is evaluated based on past audits of the group, event evaluations, past programming history, financial misconduct or group misconduct and event proposals, among other factors.
When submitting funding requests, student groups provide three tiers, or levels of funding, for each initiative. In making their recommendations, SAFC is bound by the tiers the group provides and can’t recommend an amount between the tiers or below the lowest tier, Kerr said. Therefore, the committee sometimes recommends $0 for a project if it determines the appropriate level of funding to be less than the lowest tier. This was the case for many of the organizations to which Senate allocated additional funds during the voting process.
The funding process took a total of two and a half hours, which Jones and members of the SAFC said was less than usual.
In the announcements portion of Senate, Austin Young, senator for Full-Scale Programming Groups, announced that a limited number of additional tickets for A&O spring comedian Bo Burnham will be going on sale.
Senate passed legislation introduced last week by off-campus senator and Weinberg junior Reed Wilson to investigate the creation of an off-campus listserv, census and districting.
Also, Senate revisited the confirmation of Weinberg freshman Dan Weiss as external relations vice president. President and SESP junior Claire Lew announced Weiss’ selection last week, but his confirmation was tabled due to Lew’s accidental disclosure of closed selection committee proceedings. As a result, Lew and the other members of the selection committee were required to e-mail minutes about the selection process to the senators before this week.
After an extensive and heated question-and-answer session directed at Lew and Weiss, senators voted by secret ballot on Weiss’ confirmation. Weiss did not receive two-thirds of the vote needed to be confirmed. A motion was passed to reconvene the selection committee with new guidelines, and the selection committee will undergo emergency code review this week, Jones said. [email protected]
