SGA individual funding going fast

Student Government Association approved funding Wednesday for three students to attend research conferences.

To do this, SGA distributed $2,060 from the individual allocations account, leaving $7,927.50 in the account.

This means that about 60 percent of the funds have been distributed for this fiscal year, which began on July 1 and runs through June 30, 2014. About 25 percent of funds were distributed by this time last year.

This leaves about 40 percent of the allocation left for the remaining 87 percent of the fiscal year.

The account held $20,000 for the 2014 fiscal year, which is up from $18,750 that was allocated for fiscal year 2013.

SGA President Darren Beckham, who served on the Student Fees Committee last year, said that there is a reserve of $2,604 to the individual account. If this reserve is used, Beckham said a request could be made for unallocated student fees.

“If we went over our budget, we wouldn’t necessarily go over our reserves,” Beckham said. “If we went over our reserves, we would have to go to [unallocated student] fees if we want to continue fulfilling requests.”

Students pay $37.55 per credit hour into student fees. The amount of credit hours is estimated every fiscal year in order to budget what the student fees pay for.

Unallocated student fees is the account created to hold all of the leftover fees that are not budgeted toward a specific purpose. Any amount over what was predicted for the budget goes into this account.

Neither Beckham nor Matt Conklin, SGA Treasurer, has access to the exact amount that is currently in the unallocated account. During the meeting, Conklin said “there is a sizeable amount” in the account.

Beckham also said that when the student fees process begins for the next fiscal year, SGA could choose to up their request, like they did last year.

Given the increase from last year, this may be necessary.

Even though the funds are being distributed more quickly than last year, Conklin said he is happy to distribute the money to the “very impressive students” requesting funds.

“I view it as investing in students and organizations,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to fund as many people that we can within our limitations.”

Within the current rules, four individuals are allowed to attend the same conference. According to Conklin, limitations like these may need to change to account for the increase of students requesting funding. Conklin said that lowering the number of students allowed to attend conferences could slow the distribution of funds in the future.

“You can always impose more restrictions on the funding request, possibly prioritizing requests,” Conklin said.

Any change in limitations to funding requests would have to be made by changing the statute itself, which requires a vote from the Senate.

“There’s always ideas that can be floated around,” Conklin said, “but I couldn’t make those decisions unilaterally on my own.”