The Daily Orange

Media Credit: Will Halsey

Student Association fully funded 32 out of the 160 student organization budget requests for the spring semester, according to SA budgeting information obtained by The Daily Orange. SA partially funded 40 requests and denied 88.

University Union received the most funding, with nearly 50 percent of SA's spring budget going to the programming organization. UU President Darren Goldberg said it received $320,530.49 total for its spring events.

UU received about 44 percent of the SA budget for last semester, but wasn't awarded the full amount it requested.

Following UU, the National Pan-Hellenic Council and Acacia Fraternity received the next largest amount of funding. Many other groups - particularly campus publications - expressed discontent and confusion over the budget.

Forty-two of the 88 denied budget requests were from minority groups, including the Chabad house, Hindu Students Council and Pride Union.

"We worked with SA a lot on these budgets. It was nice that we were able to have a lot of talks about it," UU President Goldberg said. "I think they recognized all of the success we've had in this fall semester and all the hard work we've done with our great events, like Juice Jam and John Legend and our Bandersnatch shows."

UU received partial funding for three events and was denied funding for its "Artists on the Brink" event, Goldberg said.

The first thing SA looks at when considering a group's proposal is if the budget request adheres to its codes, said SA Comptroller Lily Mei. "Most student organizations still ask for things potentially that we can't fund because of our codes. That's our first check point, how we do a rough cut of our budgets."

Mei declined to comment on the groups' individual budgets or why they were denied funding. Mei also declined to provide budgeting information.

The following is the breakdown of SA's budget for the spring 2010 semester:

oReceived $1,283,285.72 in budget requests

oHad $757,717.51 to spend in spring semester expenses

oGranted $672,233.86 of requests

oSet aside $70,000 for appeals for student groups who did not receive funding for a program

oIncludes $15,000 as a buffer for overspending and $483.65 as extra money that was not allocated

To receive funding, student groups had to attend fiscal training, submit budget requests to SA and meet with SA's financial board, which made recommendations. SA's assembly voted on the recommendations Nov. 9.

Continued...

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