Funding loophole needs to be fixed

By:

Shandra Jordan

Christopher J. Ortiz

Patrick Crossland

If a student organization approaches the Associated Students of

CSU Student Funding Board to receive money for an event, its

eligibility is based on the type of student organization it is

registered as. Political, religious, housing and recreational sport

organizations are not eligible for funding from the SFB, according

to today’s front-page story.

The problem we see is there are not any checks and balances or

restrictions on how organization types are defined.

As it stands now, a student organization can register itself

under a category that is eligible for funding, and once it is

approved under that category, the SFB is required to listen to the

funding request and cannot reject a request based on subjective

criteria.

But the loophole is that a political group can disguise itself

and register as a culture awareness group and become eligible for

funding.

We agree with Chuck Fogland, chairman of the CSU College

Republicans, on the fact that the rules need to be followed.

We disagree, however, the political groups like the CSU

Republicans or the Young Democrats should be eligible for student

fee money just because some arguably political groups receive

funding for political activism.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

The SFB should instead become more responsible when it allocates

money. If an organization requests money for a speaker to come in

and say that the speaker is going to talk about a certain

non-religious, non-political topic, the SFB should make sure that

the speaker, who is flown here on student fee money, is going to

talk about what the organization said he or she is going to talk

about.

It is too easy for a political group to register as one type of

group and use student fee money to hold political events.

There need to be more strict guidelines and rules on what

constitutes a particular type of student organization, and either

the Student Organizations Office or the SFB needs to oversee those

guidelines and rules.