The Student Finance Board (SFB) voted to fully fund a bus trip to an anti-war protest sponsored by the Progressive Student Alliance (PSA) at the last meeting.
The March on the Pentagon, which will be held in Arlington, Va., is open to both members and nonmembers of PSA. Though the presentation included a special appropriation request of $1,211, PSA treasurer John Leschak said that PSA received a $300 travel grant from the non-profit group Campus Progress. The total amount requested for the bus trip was $911.
"They don't need to charge $15," operations director Omar Selim said, referring to the maximum amount PSA would be willing to charge for tickets. "They won't fill up the bus, so there's no point to fund it all."
Both PSA and SFB are hoping that more than 30 students attend. In order to ensure this, it was agreed by SFB that the ticket price would have to be relatively low. SFB members decided to fully allocate the $911 with a 14-1 vote.
The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) requested $330 for a bus trip to the Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore. NCNW had made a presentation for the event two weeks prior but requested an additional $330 to go toward a coach bus instead of a school bus.
Due to the three hour drive, NCNW said more students would be willing to attend if they used a coach bus. SFB, which is only paying for transportation and not the $8 entrance fee into the museum, was concerned about the cost.
"They could raise the ticket price to pay for the coach or keep it at $8 and take the chance with the school bus," Sean Marotta, representative at-Large, said.
SFB zero-funded the request with a 9-6 vote.
SFB, which had a total balance of $119,755.75, allocated a total of $911 at the meeting.
