Among contentious debate, heated words and general frustration, Associated Students of Madison Student Council rushed to approve the Engineers Without Borders travel grant to Rwanda, extending the meeting past midnight to do so.
According to Finance Chair Matt Beemsterboer, EWB requested $20,079.85 from the Finance Committee. Finance approved $10,509.85, making it the largest requested travel grant in the history of the committee.
Matt Carlson, project leader and member of EWB, said the travel grant was to send eight students to Rwanda in January 2010. The group had acquired some forms of alternative funding through a competitive grant for $5,000, gifted equipment from the University of Wisconsin Civil Engineering Department and donation requests.
When the grant came up for question, Beemsterboer said he did not support funding the grant in its entirety.
“It’s fiscal insanity to fund a grant at this level,” Beemsterboer said, “simply that the grant is 8.4 percent of the total funds we have to allocate for the year.”
Beemsterboer explained the committee has already allocated 69 percent of the total funds in the travel grant “pot” for the year. He added if the grant were approved at its requested level, then 77.3 percent of the travel funds for the year would be done with.
He also maintained EWB had requested and received two other substantial travel grants for this semester on other projects, and altogether, if EWB were approved for this grant, it would have been allocated 14.3 percent of the whole travel fund available.
Education School Rep. Joe Koss said it should not be a concern for one organization to receive approximately 15 percent of the fund. It was hard to delineate and define the “benefit” the effect of the project would have on students and the UW campus.
Engineering Rep. T. J. Madsen said if the group had brought forth this grant earlier this semester, the council would not be having the discussion on percentages.
“This was a group that was denied eligibility last year,” Madsen said. “As alternative funding, they are coming to Finance Committee.”
SSFC Secretary and L&S Rep. Matt Manes said the bulk of the project was not going to benefit students but it instead would benefit people in another country.
“They aren’t building for the campus or even for the Madison community. It’s across the ocean in a far, far away land in Africa,” Manes said.
ASM Secretary Kurt Gosselin said the question came down to whether student fees should be paying for a project like this.
“[This] is a gross mismanagement of funds by this committee,” Gosselin said. “Should the university be providing opportunities like this? Hell yes!”
As the meeting extended past midnight, the debate got heated.
“Why are you such a douche bag? We need to get this approved,” Beemsterboer said to Gosselin as they went to extend motions and to continue debating the grant.
ASM finally approved the grant at $7,644, cutting $2,865 from the travel line item. This makes the grant the largest allocated from the travel grant funds in the Finance Committee.
