Student government seeks more organization funding

The Richmond and Westhampton College Government associations are working with the Office of Student Development to create a Student Programming Council, which would help the student governments of reaching a long-time goal of improving and increasing funding opportunities for student organizations and club sports.

Matt Whittaker, president of the Richmond College Student Government Association, said increasing funding for student organizations had been the biggest project that he had worked on during his time at Richmond.

"This has been the thing that I wanted to hang my hat on," he said.

Although student organizations were given a one-time $40,000 grant last year, Whittaker said he did not expect any money to come in this year.

"It was awesome last year when we got the $40,000 grant," he said. "We've seen them make it happen. And now it's at a point where it's in limbo."

A proposal to strengthen the student experience, written in part by Whittaker, read: "It is apparent that student organizations at the University of Richmond are underfunded, receiving 59 percent of the peer average."

Seven peer institutions were examined for comparison, including Furman University, Wake Forest University and the College of William & Mary.

Steve Bisese, vice president for student development, said administrators were still trying to make sure those were accurate numbers.

"Are they counting sports clubs, which we take out and fund separately?" he asked.

Whittaker said Richmond's Campus Activities Board was by far the most underfunded organization on campus.

"We don't see any big concerts on our campus," he said. "Where are all of these big campus-wide events? It really comes back to the funding."

According to the proposal, Richmond's CAB organization trailed the average in funding by more than $100,000. Richmond's CAB is given $80,000.

Whittaker said administrators seemed receptive to the student government's work on student organization funding.

"But I've seen people be receptive for two years about this idea," he said. "I've seen the Board of Trustees be receptive, Dr. Bisese, the deans, at this point, I think Dr. Ayers and Dr. Allred. Now someone needs to step up and take some action on it and make some real changes happen."

Bisese said he had proposed that Richmond improve how it accounts for funds. He said Richmond needed better research on what the differences between the peer institutions were, and how to make events more meaningful.

"The idea of the [Student] Programming Council," Bisese said, "was to streamline the funding, better the representation for some of the smaller groups, make sure funding is used more accurately and [hold] events that are more meaningful."

Generra Peck, president of the Westhampton College Government Association, said the council would be made up of representatives from different organizations on campus that would focus on creating campus-wide unifying events. The council, she said, would also make a central calendar so that all student organizations would know what was going on around campus.

"They [would] know they're not planning an event that's in direct conflict with a large concert or something like that," she said.

The council would be in line with the strategic plan, Peck said. Under the "student experience" principle of the strategic plan, the second goal is to "increase and strengthen opportunities to promote shared experiences among students, staff and faculty from every part of the university..." One of the action steps of this goal is to design three to six large unifying events.

Bisese said the strategic plan left this action step vague.

"That's what this group can help work out," he said.

Peck said the plan was for the council to be implemented for the 2009-10 school year.

"The foundation's been presented and now the next step is just to get official university approval," she said. "We're looking forward to doing that with the next couple of weeks."

The council may also bring in leadership training and transition training resources so the council can help organizations as they train their new officers, Peck said.

Bisese and Whittaker both said the full implementation of this council would take some time.

"We'd rather have it be that this is a formalized process that organizations can take advantage of," Peck said. "This is not going to be a council that's telling [the organizations] what to do, but a resource there for them."

Contact reporter Laurie Guilmartin at laurie.guilmartin@richmond.edu