On Monday night, the Student Services Financial Committee approved funding eligibility for the Roman Catholic foundation. Originally requesting $211,970 of the General Student Services Fund - comprised of student's segregated fees - SSFC made several cuts to RCF's proposed budget overall, granting $167,586 for the next academic year.
Among these cuts, SSFC focused on line items that failed to meet criteria seeking registered student groups that serve all students. Specific cuts came from planned service trips by the RCF next year - including trips to Philadelphia, St. Louis, Mo., Birmingham, Ala., and Kansas City, Mo. For each planned trip, RCF received $450 to cover registration costs,
After an academic year that lead to several lawsuits and then-Chancellor John Wiley overruling SSFC's decision to declare RCF as ineligible for funds, determining an appropriate budget very easily turned into yet another drawn out dispute. Instead, both sides came to a compromise, and SSFC rightfully drew a clear line between RCF's wants and needs.
For an organization such as RCF - already under scrutiny by many students as one that doesn't fulfill the needs of all students - to ask for $3,780 that comes from the same skeptical students clearly fits an organization's wants over needs. SSFC made the right call in denying these funds, especially when the GSSF dropped approximately $1.5 million from last academic year.
Additional groups' eligibility hearings were held Monday night, and their fates will be determined on Thursday. If anything comes out of the previous history of the RCF case and Monday night's budget allotment, it is that determining whether an organization potentially serves all students proves extremely tricky. As evidenced Monday, a compromise usually proves most effective.
Similar compromises will be useful in considering other registered student organizations' budgets. Furthermore, criteria that assesses whether an organization meets the needs of a clearly defined significant portion of the student body, and allocating funds based on such criteria would prove more effective - while creating less red tape - than determining whether an organization serves all students.
Ultimately, the student body at UW-Madison is a diverse one. Cutting the fat by determining individual organization's wants versus needs allows for a greater breadth of groups to accommodate students, and creates a more solid foundation for controversial budgetary decisions.
