The Undergraduate Finance Committee finalized its allocation decisions for student organizations in the fiscal year 2006-2007 last Thursday after deliberating for three weeks.
Of the seven organizations receiving money from the UFC's $825,000 budget, three are getting more money than last year and four, including Student Life Leadership, are getting less. Last year's budget was $805,800.
Student Life Leadership will no longer be funded by the UFC because it does not typically use all of its money, according to UFC Chair Jeffrey Coleman '08. The Student Life Leadership's smaller offshoot, the Leadership Conferences Fund, will instead be directly sponsored by the committee for the first time.
The Leadership Conferences Fund, which is run through the office of Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia, pays for students traveling to conferences outside of Dartmouth. It has been funded under the Student Life Leadership umbrella in the past, but this year received $2,500.
The Council on Student Organization's allotment grew the most dramatically since last year, up from roughly $230,000 to $260,000. Coleman attributed the increase to the committee's impression that students want COSO to receive a bigger percentage of the money.
"We felt that it had a lot to do with student sentiment," he said. "I know that during the campaign period [Student Body President-elect] Tim [Andreadis] said he wanted to give more money to COSO. COSO has 129 organizations to fund, so they deal with a huge portion of campus. I think students think they would get more out of their student activity fees if the money went to COSO."
The UFC receives its money from the student activity fees each student pays with tuition -- a figure of about $80 per student this year, according to Coleman -- and its budget grows in proportion to the tuition.
The Student Assembly received more money than it demanded this year, despite the fact that the seven organizations asked for a total figure larger than the UFC had to allot in the first place.
The Assembly was given $70,000, while it asked for only $68,250. It received about $20,000 more last year.
"I think in the end the committee felt that [the Assembly] asked for too little," said Coleman, who is also vice president of Student Assembly. "We felt that they needed more money to do the things they wanted to do."
The Greek Leadership Council was given $45,000, about $20,000 more than last year, in part because the body will be taking over funding for "party packs" -- or pizza and snacks delivered to registered parties -- a job previously undertaken by the Student Assembly.
Collis Governing Board also received a larger allocation because of a shift in responsibility. The organization, which will get $42,000 instead of last year's roughly $24,000, will now assume control of Lone Pine Tavern, which Programming Board previously ran in the past.
Alternately, Programming Board's budget declined slightly this year, from approximately $380,400 to $377,500.
Class Council's allocation, $28,000, fell $1,000 from last year's number, but Coleman said that the body will have more of the money to itself than ever before.
"Class Council no longer gives money to other organizations because they want to save money and use it primarily for class-related events," he said.
The 2006-2007 fiscal year officially begins on July 1.
