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.
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