A second appeal concerning the eligibility of general student services funds for the Roman Catholic Foundation was brought before the Student Judiciary Sunday.

The issue at hand was the interpretation of an Associated Students of Madison’s Student Services Finance Committee bylaw that states groups requesting eligibility "must provide a specific and identifiable educational benefit and service to the students of the university.”

The benefit may involve “event programming and/or leadership development opportunities, but must also have significant additional components," the bylaw says.

In September, SSFC denied General Student Service Fund eligibility to RCF-UW on the grounds that the organization lacked a "significant additional component" beyond its event programming and leadership opportunities.

RCF-UW appealed this decision to Student Judiciary. A panel of three SJ justices ordered the eligibility decision made by SSFC be reversed and remanded to SSFC the eligibility of RCF-UW for GSSF.

SSFC appealed this decision to the full panel of eight SJ justices.

Both SSFC and RCF-UW were in agreement that RCF-UW provided an educational benefit and service to the university. Contention continued to surround the issue of RCF-UW’s "significant additional component."

RCF-UW representative Nathaniel Romano emphasized the ambiguity of the bylaw in his argument.

"If you take SSFC’s decision to its logical conclusion, then the bylaws are meaningless because every individual member can interpret the bylaw however they want to interpret it," Romano said.

SSFC Chair Alex Gallagher acknowledged the system in deciding GSSF eligibility is not black and white.

"In terms of liberal and conservative, we can’t fund a liberal group and a conservative group that do analogous things," Gallagher said. "But we can have (SSFC) members that say, ‘my view of this is more broad,’ ‘my view of this is more constricted,’ based on their ideas of what it means to provide services to this campus.”

RCF-UW Chair Beth Czarnecki said different interpretations of the same bylaw presented complications to groups requesting funding.

"It shouldn’t be a game of having to figure out what you have to do," Czarnecki said. "Now we know that in order to win, we have to go and talk to SSFC members. If we were a new group, we might not know that, and we might be denied eligibility simply because we didn’t know how to play the game."

After a two-hour hearing, the Student Judiciary adjourned.

"I hope that the judiciary stays on task in deciding the actual issues," SSFC legal counsel Patrick Elliott said following the hearing. "There were two issues in the initial hearing, and we won on one of those issues, and we lost on the other, and we tried to appeal that one. I’m pretty confident that the judiciary will come to the right conclusion."

Czarnecki also hopes for a conclusion — and some concrete answers.

"I still feel like we don’t have a definition of they’re looking for, which is what we were hoping for in the first case," Czarnecki said. "Maybe now we’ll get it in an appeal."

The Student Judiciary will rule within 10 school days on whether or not SSFC’s decision to deny RCF-UW’s eligibility for GSSF was proper.