The Student Services Finance Committee completed the eligibility hearings for new student groups seeking funding from segregated fees Monday night. The group will complete its eligibility hearings Wednesday when members hear an appeal from the student group MeCHA, a group previously denied eligibility.
SSFC members found two of the prospective new student groups eligible for funding and dubbed the other two ineligible.
Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment and Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow will be eligible to apply for student funding to further their student services, while the Indigenous Law Students’ Association and the State-Langdon Neighborhood Association will not.
The only unanimous vote of the night was reserved for PAVE, whose eligibility SSFC members unequivocally supported. The female empowerment group works to educate students about sexual assault and provide a supportive environment for sexual assault survivors.
“It’s pretty clear that PAVE provides a service that is greatly needed on this campus,” said SSFC member Rob Welygan.
Fellow committee member Gladys Reyes agreed that the PAVE plays a vital role in serving students, especially in light of the frequency of sexual assaults on campus.
“It’s alarming to me that these statistics [about sexual assault] apply to our campus,” Reyes said. “PAVE is the voice of the survivors.”
Collegians for a Constructive Tommorrow, an organization that works to educate students on environmental issues, was also granted eligibility.
Committee members questioned CFACT representative Matt Modell via telephone regarding the organization’s proof of operations for the past two years leading to its eligibility request. Some members voiced concerns that student money funding CFACT would also be used for the organization’s national counterpart. Modell said the money would benefit all campus students.
In supporting CFACT, finance-committee member Cate Dobyns said the organization will serve to “show students different viewpoints.”
The State-Langdon Neighborhood Association, which works with students to lobby against the city on student-related issues and improve tenant conditions, faced mixed reviews from the committee.
SSFC member Ryan Nichols said the neighborhood association limited its influence to a small portion of the student population by serving primarily residents in the State Street and Langdon Street area.
“It sounds like a community group that should be funded by the community it serves,” Nichols said.
Nichols also pointed out a clause in the organization’s bylaws stating that university students who do not live on State and Langdon streets could become members of the neighborhood association only if the group received funding from the finance committee.
Baumgardner agreed that the conditions for SLNA membership were suspect.
“It seems they wrote their constitution geared toward meeting funding requirements and not toward helping the most students,” Baumgardner said.
Other members said SLNA promoted student activism and provided a forum for student voices to be heard in state government.
“We should be funding students who want to actively lobby for their rights,” said finance-committee member Monica SanMiguel.
The Indigenous Law Student’s Association was denied eligibility on the grounds that it did not provide service to a diverse portion of the student population. Although the law association holds a yearly conference open to all university students, the majority of its programming is geared toward law students.
In defense of such allegations, an ILSA representative said the program was striving to reach all undergraduate students through a mentoring system.
“We would be a program that reaches out to all undergrads and recruits, not only law students,” she said.
Finance Committee member Mark Baumgardner said the mentoring service was not a sufficient measure to make the organization applicable to all students.
“The scope of this mentoring program is very limited,” he said.
“This sounds like it’s only for students interested in continuing to graduate school, which is not a significant portion of the student population,” SSFC member Tom Clark said.
