KSC gives 4.5 percent increase in student organization funding

At Keene State College, most decisions regarding student organizations and events are left in the hands of students to be planned and organized. However, these events can’t happen without proper funding. The Student Assembly has a finance committee to help make decisions regarding club funds.

This finance committee consists of five members and is chaired by junior Brian Bobinski.
Bobinski and the rest of the board recently completed the process of making funding recommendations for the student organizations for the 2010-2011 school year.
As a part of the process, the board examined all of the activities and the on-campus involvement of the organizations over the past year.

“Each month, clubs and groups need to submit an activity report. We tried to let groups know what they would need to do before we made our recommendations,” Bobinski said.
The process starts with each organization submitting a funding request. After this, the finance committee looks over the requests and makes recommendations based on what the club’s financial needs are and how active the group has been on campus.

Next, each group has a chance to review the recommendation and, if they are unhappy, they are able to submit an appeal.

“The appeal is very useful,” Bobinski said. “We can only get so much information from a written request, but when we have them sitting in front of us they can explain their needs more thoroughly. This year there were between six and eight appeals.”
Senior Aaron Mercado-Reza is another member of the finance committee and said the  committee isn't the final word in funding.

“We make recommendations based on what we think is right for each club and the school. The Student Assembly can choose to listen to us or not though,” Mercado-Reza said.

For groups that fail to submit a request for funding by the deadline, there is an option to request funding at a lower amount than what they received for the current year.
“This year we had 12 groups that did not submit funding requests by the deadline in December,” Bobinski said.

The groups that did submit requests are eligible for an increase in funding.
According to Bobinski, however, there are limits to what can be given out.
“Every year, Director of Finances Jay Kahn gives us a certain amount that we cannot exceed, this year it was an increase of 4.5 percent from last year,” Bobinski said.
One club that received an initial 4.5 percent increase was the rugby club. Sophomore Tom Rynne is the president of the rugby club and said they were looking for much more than the club initially received.

“We were looking to get new jerseys and another assistant coach. We also know that we’re going to be traveling a lot more next season and that gets expensive,” Rynne said.
Rynne said that he and the club treasurer appealed the finance committees’ decision and that it was a worthwhile process.

“The finance committee was very helpful,” Rynne said. “They ended up giving us a 20 percent increase in our budget, which is still not as much as we requested, but it’s a lot better than their initial recommendation.”

According to Rynne, the rugby club has grown by 12 people since last year and the growth is part of the reason the club was looking for more funding.

“We need the extra funding because when we travel we need to cover the transportation costs along with other needs for the team. If we have 12 more people we need to get another van for each trip we take. The more people we have the more everything costs.”
The rugby team isn't the only club growing in size. The environmental outing club has roughly tripled in size this year. Junior Owen Donohoe is the president of the club and said he understands the needs of a growing student group.

“Every trip we take cost's more with  a bigger club, but we understand there's a limited amount of funding to go around,” Donohoe said. The President of the Feminist Collective is Jon Donais. Donais, a junior, said the club was not happy with the finance committee's first decision.

“We weren't happy with the initial decision because we actually lost $100 from our budget this year, even though were growing in size becoming more active on campus,” Donais said. Donais said he understands the process but it isn't easy.

“The process wasn't that bad, it’s just that it would have been nice to get the extra money without having to go through appealing the original decision,” Donias said. Donais said while the club is continuing to grow they requires adequate funding so they can draw in new members.

“Like most clubs, we’re growing, but it takes time and funds to grow, it doesn't just happen over night,” Donais said. While some groups were unhappy with the funding they received, Bobinski said this year’s recommendations were similar to years past.
“Our evaluations and recommendations were pretty standard,” Bobinski said. “We tried to rely on the activities reports groups submitted as well as looking at how the groups are using their funding now.”

Sean O’Donnell can be contacted at sodonnell@keeneequinox.com.