The student government’s Student Services Finance Committee voted Thursday to approve new criteria for groups applying for funding from the General Student Services Fund, along with the 2015 transportation budget.

Revised GSSF Criteria

SSFC also voted to revise the criteria for GSSF eligibility, which mandates requirements for organizations applying for funding from a $1.4 million pool of students’ segregated fees.

The committee aimed to clarify ambiguous criteria in the document to make the process of applying for funding easier to navigate.

“The goal of the end result was to make the document less ambiguous and less confusing for any RSOs and future session of SSFCs,” Chair David Vines said.

SSFC amended the draft of the eligibility criteria to require core programming to be available throughout the academic year, with at least one core program that can be made available upon a student’s request.

Members voted 7-1 to approve the revised eligibility requirements.

“Some of the things that we were doing was plugging holes,” Vines said. “We have the frame work that we wanted out of this document. We wanted to make sure interpretations were clear for ambiguous terms. This is substantially very similar to the earlier document and I think it’s going to be clearer for student council and future SSFC’s to work with.”

The criteria will come before Student Council for a vote on March 26.

UW Transportation Budget

SSFC also voted unanimously to approve the transportation budget for fiscal year 2015.

The committee amended the total budget for student hourly wages to $9,700, while also docking the advertising budget to $6,000, as requested by Margaret Bergamini of transportation services. SSFC unanimously approved the $4,252,700 budget.

“As someone who has worked in transportation for almost 30 years and is very experienced, we trust Margaret’s judgment when it comes to funding,” Vice Chair Ian Malmstadt said.

[Photo via Louis Johnson]