By now, we’re sure you’ve thoroughly dissected the incredibly nuanced and almost mind-numbing details of Campus Women’s Center denial of funding eligibility by the Student Services Finance Committee. In the days following SSFC’s decision, the Campus Women’s Center has tried to review its options while supporters of the group (who are not affiliated with CWC) have tried to conceive of hare-brained schemes like showing “solidarity” with services provided by MultiCultural Student Coalition. (Read: piggy-backing on their safe-space services.)

And while this Editorial Board does sympathize with those CWC supporters and service users — since the group obviously provides some direct services — we cannot show sympathy for the CWC organizers responsible for submitting their application to SSFC. CWC’s financial leadership simply didn’t follow the hard-and-fast guidelines laid out by SSFC and consistently failed to meet its criteria until it had already been denied.

We are not complete wonks about SSFC. We know the criteria can be confusing and contentious when not properly explained and is still a challenge even with proper information. SSFC members would likely agree with us — it’s just they spend a good amount of their waking hours poring over documents and numbers to determine eligibility.

The problem is the person responsible for CWC’s application, financial coordinator Zorian Lasowsky, was a member of SSFC. If there were ever a group of people on campus capable of understanding the labyrinth of conditions for direct service calculations, it should be the people who set the criteria and study the nuances of that criteria as if it were a 600-level seminar.

Mr. Lasowsky’s original application, however, did not reveal any sort of expertise. What was listed in the application was a vague set of coordinators and programs and approximations of time spent on their direct services summed up not in percentages but terms like “almost all.” Although CWC then submitted updated numbers with approximate estimates using fractions spent on direct services, this modified information was based solely on interviews with those coordinators. SSFC Secretary Matt Manes and Rep. Carl Fergus decided to do their own calculations, however. It simply took the reported staff hours from the previous year and crossed them with the budget spreadsheet to get a more accurate reading of exact time spent on direct services. This resulted in about 40-45 percent spent on direct services.

But even when CWC submitted new numbers removing two programs not deemed direct services, they were below the direct service threshold for eligibility.

Mr. Lasowsky admits that SSFC was well within its right to deny CWC based on what it submitted and he should just stop there. CWC failed to prove to SSFC they meet criteria for funding, and it is not the committee’s job to hold its hand through the process.

We admit the process and criteria for SSFC may need to be evaluated down the road due to the increasing complexity of student group claims and coming decision on contract status from the Chancellor’s Office.

But this hinged on the capability of a student of the system who never got more than a C in SSFC 101. Instead of chastising the committee for not giving it a fourth chance to clear up confusion, it should simply jettison Mr. Lasowsky and prepare for next year’s eligibility hearings.