The Associated Students of Madison Finance Committee has frozen funding on grants for Student Labor Action Coalition and revoked an event grant for a committee of Wisconsin Union Directorate to emphasize the need for student organizations to follow their policies.
According to Student Services Finance Committee Legal Counsel Kurt Gosselin, policy violations among Finance have not been a huge issue in previous years.
Finance offers events, travel, operations and a more recently implemented open funds grant to registered student organizations who apply by a certain deadline, according to Finance Chair Matt Beemsterboer.
“The only time a [registered student organization] generally gets denied funding is if they don’t show up to a grant hearing,” Beemsterboer said. “But even then we have allowed students to appeal that; it’s up to the discretion of the chair.”
He added there are very few student organizations that are denied funding as long as they are following ASM policies and procedures. One specific policy currently in contention is the policy for using funds for printing.
The policy, as stated in the ASM Financial Policies and Procedures guidelines, are specifically that “an ASM disclaimer and logo must be included on all publicly distributed materials and must be done at StudentPrint or another university print shop.”
“SLAC was an RSO when they applied for funding. They were granted funding last year — they used that money on these fliers, which they weren’t allowed to pay for. I don’t think they knew about it, and this has never been an issue before,” Gosselin said. “I don’t think they registered as a RSO this year, so they were just recently notified about frozen funds.”
According to Gosselin, the fliers SLAC printed off were to advertise a party for ASM elections, where it was assumed alcohol would be consumed, which is in direct violation of the policies and procedures.
“One of our members, during last year’s ASM elections, mistakenly printed out 50 copies of a poster through StudentPrint for a fundraising party. Estimating 10 cents per page, that’s $5.” said Jan Van Tol, UW senior and a member of SLAC, in an e-mail to The Badger Herald.
Van Tol added those posters were subsequently destroyed and were never posted anywhere. It was an honest mistake by that member, he said, and it was certainly never SLAC’s intention to spend ASM money on an election.
Van Tol added he did not expect the committee’s decision to suspend SLAC’s funding would have much of an impact on their work, but they intend to appeal the decision unless Finance can provide a better justification than the accidental misuse of a few dollars.
In the case of the WUD committee, $9,000 was cut from the Madison Music Festival event grant that was approved for this year and took place in September, according to Beemsterboer.
He said the committee failed to print the ASM logo and disclaimer on an ad they distributed to The Badger Herald and the Daily Cardinal. The committee voted unanimously to cut the entire funding for the event.
“We feel that was unwarranted. We respect their policies and procedures and know why they are in place, but it’s a grave punishment for a minor infringement,” WUD committee member Rose Gear said.
The WUD committee has already appealed the decision and was promptly denied. They are unsure of exactly the next step they will take, but a second appeal is possible as is taking the decision to Student Judiciary if “worse comes to worse,” Gear said.
