As student government allocates funding for clubs, some are left with none

Editor's note: The Collegian requested $9,604.88 from SOBAC and was granted $6,208.90

Of the more than $217,000 of funding that the University of Richmond student government organizations voted to allocate Wednesday night, none was given to The Octaves or Forum Magazine. 

Richmond College Student Government Association (RCSGA) and Westhampton College Government Association (WCGA) met together in the Gottwald Science Center for their annual Student Organization Budget Allocation Committee (SOBAC) presentation. SOBAC is a joint initiative between RCSGA and WCGA that annually allocates funds to university-recognized organizations in order to maximize the quality of student life.

This year, the committee was given more than $217,000 from the school. The school board also gave SOBAC an extra $50,000 requested by the committee after a spike in funding requests from clubs in the last few years. This is the highest sum of money SOBAC has been given in recent years. 

At the end of the committee’s work -- a process that took the team of eleven students more than 36 hours in total -- they still had the extra $50,000 left over and some clubs were left with no funding, prompting some upset.

Angelo Suggs, President of the RCSGA, said that SOBAC was disappointed to report that after multiple years of an upward trend in involvement, groups were not proactive in filling out their requests. 

The Forum Magazine was not given SOBAC funding for the next school year because it missed the application deadline, but Forum publisher Joe Han said this would not have a significant impact on the Forum's operations. 

"Our application went through about 20 minutes late," Han said. "While we are of course disappointed that SOBAC didn't consider our application, we do not anticipate that this will negatively impact our operations budget."

In addition to an application, in order to be eligible for funding, the treasurer or some other representative of each club is required to attend one of the two offered information sessions to learn how to fill out a spreadsheet that includes that club’s expenditures, current balance and revenue totals for the previous and coming fiscal years. At these sessions, SOBAC members explain the guidelines and standards each club must meet in order to get funding.

This year, each club was required to complete the spreadsheet and submit it to SOBAC before the March 4 deadline. Each club then had the opportunity to make their case for funding in a hearing with the committee.

A member of The Octaves, Conor Lemmon, was present at the meeting to appear before the assembly and appeal for funding.

The committee chairs, Luis Davila and Sarah Kate Welch, explained that although the school gave them the extra $50,000 and they had that extra money left over at the end of their work, they were simply doing their jobs in denying clubs that failed to fill out the required application.

“We were still just as fair as we have been in the past few years – just because we have extra money doesn’t mean we are going to just give it out to people,” Welch said in response to Lemmon.

Davila and Welch said that when some club treasurers and leaders, such as The Octaves presenters, were unable to answer questions such as, “What is your current account balance?” the committee was hesitant to grant funding.

Clubs and groups will have the opportunity to appeal their funding in the fall of 2016 if they consider it to have been calculated incorrectly.

After The Octaves member made his case, the SOBAC chairs told him that The Octaves members who had represented the group during their hearing must have failed to accurately convey the group’s need to the committee.

“I think that’s a problem with the system," Lemmon replied.

The three big winners of the unanimously approved budget were SpiderBoard with $88,539, The SEEDS Project with $20,896 and Camp Kesem with $10,528.86.

The spreadsheet with the full list of fund allocation can be requested from Luis Davila at luis.davila@richmond.edu.

Contact Campus Political Reporter Claire Comey at claire.comey@richmond.edu