The Student Finance Board (SFB) passed a motion Sept. 14 to fully fund the College Union Board's $29,280 request to bring singer/songwriter Gavin DeGraw to the College.
The event will be held in the Recreation Center in the beginning of November. With their ID cards, each student can purchase two tickets at $15 per ticket.
For some SFB members, this price seemed steep, but all members agreed that CUB's concerts and the money received for them are strictly used to the benefit the student body.
"I think this concert will have a lot of success," Erica Klazmer, sophomore representative, said.
SFB spent the remainder of the meeting discussing the significant number of new club funding requests made recently, including requests from the Japanese Club, Individuals for Diversity & Equality Awareness in Learning (IDEAL) and Alpha Phi Omega, a community service fraternity.
"The requests are not going to slow down," Julia Pratt, executive director, said. "It is necessary to go even further with more detailed policies and guidelines."
In an effort to form a better system for dealing with requests, the board evaluated and added to each of its existing policies in the manual.
Members agreed that clubs with exclusive membership will continue to not receive money from the Student Activities Fund (SAF).
SFB members also agreed that new clubs must provide a roster, including member contact information, so that SFB may contact them to confirm membership.
Clubs are considered new when they have not had a budget for the past fiscal year.
The board also deemed it necessary for both SFB and the Student Government Association (SGA) to read over a club's constitution thoroughly to ensure clubs do not alter their constitutions to fit either SFB or SGA criteria.
Ravi Kaneriya, representative at large, suggested that SFB and SGA keep each other's criteria in mind when reading the constitutions.
"SGA should start considering our criteria as well as their own," he said.
"We are working on doing that," Blair Gumnic, SGA representative for SFB and vice president of administration and finance for SGA, said.
If SFB decides not to fund an organization, SFB members agreed that there should be several options for that club to publicize without the use of SAF funds.
The calendar spread offered in The Signal, the loop bus fundraisers and Outdoor Recreation Award funds (money given by alumni that is available to all non-SAF funded organizations) are all possibilities, members said.
According to Pratt, recognizing and funding possible duplicate clubs can be tricky when processing new club requests. If a club meets SFB criteria and does not duplicate another club's purpose, it may receive SAF funding, provided that there is a need and interest for that particular club on campus.
SFB's fear is that duplicate clubs may be the result of students in current clubs wishing to gain executive-board status by forming new organizations.
"To get a good job, it seems like you need to be the president or vice president," Pratt said.
She added, however, that forming subcommittees and "working with an organization that is already there" may be the better solution.
"What everyone on this campus needs to understand is that getting funding is a privilege, not a right," Pratt said.
