The student government considered the Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow’s funding eligibility for the second time this year and contemplated extending a committee’s session to handle several pending eligibility decisions.

The Student Services Finance Committee held a second General Student Services Fund eligibility hearing for CFACT during a meeting on Thursday.

In September 2010, CFACT was denied GSSF funding eligibility due to an Associated Students of Madison equipment policy violation the group made in 2009 that spilled over into 2010.

CFACT failed to return equipment it had rented from ASM by its due date.

CFACT President Joshua Smith addressed the issues surrounding the group’s latent process of returning the equipment.

Smith said CFACT had every intention of returning the equipment, but confusion arose over which equipment was owned by ASM and which was owned by CFACT and made it hard to return every item in a timely manner.

“We did have correspondence with ASM and were actively working to return the items,” Smith said. “Once we knew what we had to return, we did it in a very short period of time.”

SSFC Chair Matt Manes said the explanation CFACT presented – that the violation was simply a misunderstanding – is a misrepresentation of what actually happened.

CFACT is not the only student organization with its GSSF eligibility still pending. The Wisconsin Student Public Interest Research Group is also awaiting a final decision on its funding eligibility.

During the meeting, Manes introduced the idea of extending the committee’s session beyond its terminable date to allow the committee more time to handle the decisions.

Manes said the committee would essentially be a “shadow SSFC” and would work in concordance with the new session’s SSFC only on the cases involving WISPIRG and CFACT until a final decision had been reached in both.

SSFC Representative Sarah Neibart said she agreed with the proposal.

Considering all other organizations were evaluated by the standing committee for GSSF eligibility for the fiscal year of 2011-12, Neibart said, extending the session is the only way to maintain viewpoint neutrality.

Manes said the suggestion to extend the session came out of conversations with the University of Wisconsin Office of Administrative Legal Services.

“We’re in an unprecedented situation,” Manes said. “We’ve never had to deal with a situation like this.”