After delaying its decision because of Fall term's swimming and diving team cuts, the Undergraduate Finance Committee recently announced how student activities money will be allocated this year to various student-run organizations.
The Programming Board received $363,000, the Committee on Student Organizations $205,000, the Student Assembly $60,000, the four class councils $25,000, the Office of Student Life $24,000, the Collis Governing Board $24,000 and the Greek Leadership Council $19,000.
Although the distributions reflect no great change from last year, the UFC -- which was set to release its decision the day the swim cuts were announced -- delayed releasing news of the allocations for fear that the team's supporters would accuse the committee of funding organizations like the Programming Board at the expense of the swim team.
In fact, money under the UFC's discretion comes from a separate student activities fee -- currently $257 -- that students incur on each term's bill. It has no direct connection to the athletic budget.
Although the just-announced reinstatement of the swimming and diving teams makes the committee's prior concerns somewhat irrelevant, UFC members stressed the importance of understanding the difference between their distribution fund and the College's general budget.
"The fund was specifically created to fund student-run organizations," UFC Chair and Student Body President Janos Marton '04 said. "We didn't want to release the numbers because we were afraid that without a detailed understanding of how this works, people might be angry that groups are getting so much money when the swim team had just been cut."
Even if the UFC had wanted to devote money to reinstating the teams, it would have been logistically impossible, committee members said. The UFC's fifth and final meeting occurred just hours after the cuts were announced, when the committee had all but finalized its numbers.
Several members dismissed as unfair Dean of the College James Larimore's comment in The Dartmouth that "if it were up to me to take money from the Student Activities Fund to offset some other things, it might be tempting." Some felt that the comment transferred to them a burden that was not theirs to bear.
"If Larimore was really serious about the UFC allocating money to the swim team, [the College] should have alerted the UFC a lot earlier," Marton said.
But with the swim team tumult behind them, committee members tried hard to downplay any possible controversies over how much money various groups received, saying that they thought the money was distributed fairly and without angering any one group.
Although many groups requested significantly more money than they in fact received -- the Student Assembly and the Greek Leadership Council both received about $20,000 less than requested -- most groups ended up receiving approximately the same amount they did last year and some even more.
The UFC was working with somewhat bigger pool than in past years due to higher enrollment patterns, but the $720,000 it had at its disposal was still significantly less than the $876,000 total requested by the eight groups.
In making its decisions, the committee considered the strength of the organizations' proposals and to what extent they felt the organization was truly student run and benefited the student body as a whole, committee member Amit Anand '03 said.
The Student Assembly was a clear winner, with the UFC granting it $60,000 and recognizing that the Assembly "has lots of power when it puts its money where its policy is," Anand said.
Nevertheless, concerns about the extent to which the Assembly's Dormitory Improvement Group would benefit all students -- not just ones whose dorms received improvement funds -- kept the UFC from granting the Assembly the entirety of what it asked for, UFC member Julie Webb '04 said.
The Office of Student Life and the Collis Governing Board received slightly less money than last year because the UFC felt they possessed less autonomy from the administration and lacked sufficiently open membership, Marton said.
Cutting down on the budgetary confusion caused by co-sponsorship of events was a concern during the allocation process, Webb said, adding this was the UFC's rationale for nearly doubling the Greek Leadership Council's budget.
"The historically black and Hispanic Greek houses host a lot of cultural events and are always asking groups like COSO or the Programming Board to co-sponsor," Webb said. "We thought, why not just give them more of their own money?"
In addition to the Student Body President, the UFC is composed of 14 other members -- five appointed by the Student Assembly's Membership and Internal Affairs Committee, and one representative from each of the organizations applying for money.
