The Associated Students of Madison Finance Committee has recently considered adopting changes to its policies and procedures that would place stricter guidelines on student organizations' eligibility for segregated fees. Among these proposed changes are capping the number of times that Registered Student Organizations can request funding from the committee and placing a limit on the total amount given for any single travel grant request. These changes would greatly improve the way the committee allocates segregated fees.

The first change would prohibit Registered Student Organizations from receiving funding for a second grant request until the end of the semester. In previous semesters, there have been a couple of student organizations that have requested funding for multiple events throughout the semester. The proposed changes to the policy would ensure that the segregated fees, which are paid by all students, are spread out among more student organizations.

Another proposed change would require events to be held within reasonable walking distance from the UW campus. This would increase the accessibility of events to UW-Madison students, whose segregated fees are used to pay for speakers, performers and their travel. One of the key criteria to funding events is to make sure that they are open to all students. Not all students have cars, and the inconvenience of taking a bus could deter many from attending the events.

There's another flaw in the current Finance Committee policies. For any travel grant to be approved, the student organization is supposed to hold an event on campus that shares the knowledge and skills gained from the trip with the whole student body, including nonmembers. This puts too much burden on student organizations to advertise to the whole student population. If you're not in the Judo club, you probably won't care to hear about their experiences at a tournament in Iowa. These knowledge-sharing meetings can and should be held primarily for current club members, as they are the ones most interested in learning from those travel experiences.

Finance Committee chair Sree Atluru mentioned in a December Finance Committee meeting that she wanted to give more discretion to the committee members to decide how much funding to approve for travel requests. She believes that the committee would use the maximum number as a shortcut to decide how much to approve.

While I agree that in an ideal world Finance Committee members would be able to objectively assess the necessity and appropriateness of every grant, research has shown that there are several subconscious perceptual errors that can make this decision-making process difficult.

The first perceptual error is known as the anchor and adjustment effect. My own course work in the Business School has taught me that in negotiations, the final settlement point leans toward the opening offer. Let's take a look at an example of a travel grant request. Suppose a campus newspaper was requesting money for a journalism convention in New York. Do you think they would end up with more funding if they requested $300 or $3,000? Obviously the second request has the potential for a higher amount of funding. Without a cap on the amount of funding that can be given for a travel grant, student organizations can take advantage of this cognitive bias by setting a validly perceived benchmark with the opening request, whether or not this amount is indeed valid. Debate starts at a higher number, and consequently, the final amount approved ends up at a higher number.

Of all the event and travel grants heard by the committee in the fall semester, only one was denied funding. This can be explained by looking at the effects of framing. Framing the actions as a loss instead of a gain can affect people's perceptions. People like avoiding losses. By framing the negotiation as a loss, the committee members are more reluctant to zero-fund organizations. The solution is to start organizations off with zero dollars and incrementally add money if their requests are justified. Alternatively, the finance committee could look at their total pool of segregated fees for the semester and frame each grant as a loss to the budget. This will lead to a more fiscally responsible way of allocating student segregated fees.

If the Finance Committee members were completely rational machines, there would be little need for some of these changes to keep the members in control. But all these decisions involve a human element, and as James Madison once said, "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."

These policy changes are imperative and will act as checks against the flaws of the representatives.

Tim Fung ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in marketing, management and human resources and political science. He is also the ASM Finance Committee at-large appointee.