Student governments disperse about $35,000 to clubs in unusual fall allocation

Members of Richmond College Student Government Association (RCSGA) and Westhampton College Government Association (WCGA) divided about $35,000 among campus clubs, a rare occurrence for the fall semester.

In an effort to provide more funding to campus clubs and organizations that need money to support new initiatives, the Office of Student Development granted the Student Organization Budget Allocation Committee (SOBAC) an extra $50,000 last year, which the committee did not disperse at the time.

RCSGA and WCGA Treasurers Abbas Abid and Page Soper were both new to the chair positions this year and had to decide what to do with the extra money. After working on a plan all summer, they decided to allocate the $50,000 in the fall as opposed to adding it to the larger amount given out during the traditional spring SOBAC presentation, they said. 

Abid and Soper both agreed that they didn’t want the clubs that needed extra funding for their new initiates to have to wait an entire year before they saw that money.

To determine how they were going to distribute the funding, Abid and Soper said they worked with six finance committee members from the two student governments and allowed each of the eight funding applicants to attend a hearing where they had five minutes to present their funding requests. 

On Sep. 30, the finance committee spent 11 hours reading through the applications. Soper said that the committee had created a set of guidelines so that each club would be looked at impartially, and funding was granted based on adherence to these guidelines.

However, not all club applications complied with the guidelines, Abid and Soper said. The College Democrats requested $3,324, but were found guilty of violating the SOBAC rule against using funding to purchase t-shirts, so they were only granted $100 in funding. 

SpiderBoard asked to receive all of the $50,000, and even though they were not granted this wish, they were still awarded the most money: $22,425. Other clubs and organizations that received funding included the SEEDS Project, University Players, UR Debate Council and Osmosis Magazine.

At the end of the presentation, Abid and Soper announced that there was still $14,767 leftover from the original $50,000 that will roll over to the spring SOBAC session. Both RCSGA and WCGA voted without objection to pass the proposed funding allocations.

RCSGA member Bobby McCurdy remarked, “SOBAC has never been that easy!”

Contact reporter Jocelyn Grzeszczak at jocelyn.grzeszczak@richmond.ed