Student Assembly Finance Commission
April 10th, 2006
5:00 p.m. — 6:00 p.m.
163 Day Hall

I. Call to Order

The Meeting was called to order at 5:00 p.m.

II. Roll Call

Commissioners

Samuel Bendix, Adam Castle, Jeffrey Cohan, Jillian Dorans, Liz Falcone, Erica Fischer, Colin Heath, Jennifer Hsu, Brittni Levinson, Scottie McQuilkin, Samuel Miller-Little, Nadia Ormsby, Spencer Pepper, Ashwin Phadnis, Eric Schulman, Anastasiya Sidorova, Kate-Lynn Timmermans, Marissa Wilson, Joey Zielinski, Luke Chernosky, Mary DePalma, Alex Saltman

III. Business of the Day

Policy Issues —Co-Orgs

J. Zielinski said that Ms. Singh, Ms. Grant, and Ms. Yu have all resigned from the commission. Ms. Singh, however, will remain till the end of the semester. He also asked that any commissioner thinking of resigning tell him before April 17th.

E. Fischer said that interviews are April 22nd from 10–4pm in Goldwin Smith 160 and 162. She said that next Monday applications are due, and some of the commission will be going over these applications from 6–8pm.

S. McQuilkin asked that if anyone wanted to come to help review the applications, they would like the help.

J. Zielinski said that today the commission would be focusing on the creating a section in the President and Treasurer’s handbook (P&T) devoted to co-organized budgets. He wants specifically address the issue of groups getting co-organized funding but not regular group funding.

S. McQuilkin said that she was worried that a lot of the co-organized groups are duplicate groups. She thought that the SAFC could put a good majority of the sections having to do with normal groups in to the new co-org section.

L. Falcone said that she was afraid of just taking it that section on as it might not have a great enough effect. She believed that the SAFC should add a clause in the section forcing groups to have to submit a normal budget sometime before asking for co-organized group money.

S. McQuilkin suggested that groups fill out some kind of form so that they show they are being an active group before they can be considered for co-organized funding.

J. Zielinski said that he thought co-organized groups should have to fill out Part I of the regular online budget.

L. Falcone wondered what would happen to the groups that only did co-organized events.

K. Nadolny said that a long time ago, co-orgs were created to bring together two different groups and show two different sides. Nowadays, she added, it appears that most of these groups are just duplicate groups.

M. Wilson suggested that co-org group would have to turn in their budgets at the same time, so that the SAFC could catch duplicate groups better.

E. Fischer said that she believed that would not solve the problem of groups’ double dipping for co-org money.

J. Zielinski also noted that the SAFC could still miss those duplicate groups even if they turned them in together.

M. Wilson mentioned that she wanted the SAFC to go back to the old definition of a co-organized event and get away from two similar groups putting on an event.

J. Zielinski said that since co-organized events are so big, those groups should be rewarded with funding.

K. Nadolny said that the SAFC could make it one of the groups priorities, which would take away one of their priorities.

K. Timmermans responded that this would not be rewarding the groups for doing such a big event.

K. Nadolny answered that the reward is the bigger allotment for speaker money.

L. Falcone asked that someone in the office do a study on co-orgs to see if taking away a group’s priority for a co-organized event would make a different.

K. Nadolny said that the commission could ask Terry to pull it up.

E. Fischer asked that if a group only had one priority, would the SAFC take that away.

S. McQuilkin answered no, that the group could only have a maximum of three priorities, so they would then have two.

K. Nadolny said that she wanted to look at the co-org structure to see what most of those groups do, because she felt that most co-org groups were just duplicate groups.

S. McQuilkin said that the SAFC could invest more time in the fall to check for duplicate groups, instead of the spring. She also mentioned that there are no annual co-orgs, which was inconsistent with the rest of the funding process.

J. Zielinski mentioned that he would rather keep the co-orgs per semester, instead of annual.

Quick Poll: Get rid of co-orgs and make them a priority- 6. Keep it the same — 11

J. Zielinski said that he would like to make groups only have one co-org a semester.

M. Wilson said that she would like see annual budgets for co-orgs as well.

L. Falcone said that the SAFC should make co-orgs just like regular budgets.

K. Nadolny said that she felt like planning before being funded was possible so giving them an extra semester would not help. She also mentioned that there would be a lot of changes to annual budgets the closer the event got.

M. Wilson said that the SAFC offers annual budgets for normal budgets; they should offer the same for co-orgs.

J. Zielinski voiced his agreement with Ms. Wilson.

L. Chernosky asked if the SAFC created annual co-orgs, how they would address new information.

L. Falcone said that the SAFC could treat it just like a normal budget.

B. Levinson asked that if the SAFC created annual co-orgs, would the cuts in the fall be greater.

J. Zielinski responded by saying that they would not since the SAFC already front loads the allocations. He also mentioned that if budgets in general were semester, the cuts would be more equal.

K. Nadolny added that she had seen a lot of annual budgets that should have been semester.

M. Wilson said that the whole funding system doesn’t allow groups to plan anyway, and eliminating annual budgets would make it worse.

L. Falcone added that the SAFC should encourage groups to plan ahead.

J. Zielinski asked if Mr. Castle of Mr. Cohen had any input as they were conversing within themselves.

Mr. Cohan and Mr. Castle said they agreed with everything.

J. Zielinski said that the groups should be limited to one co-org per semester.

E. Fischer said that she though it should be two per entire year instead.

S. Miller-Little said that he has seen many groups with the same e-board during the budget hearings.

S. McQuilkin responded by saying that next fall the commission should pay attention to things like that more.

E. Fischer suggested that only one table handle co-orgs so that they can catch the duplicate groups better.

S. McQuilkin said that they would not want to see many other modifications to the co-orgs section.

J. Zielinski said that he would like the co-orgs section to be very similar to Category II. He also added that since the SAFC has annual normal budgets, they should have annual co-orgs. Lastly he asked if the SAFC wanted to clarify how many co-orgs each could do so that they were only allowed one per semester no matter what.

S. McQuilkin responded by saying that the SAFC should check to make sure groups only do one co-org per semester or two annually.

J. Zielinski ended by asking the commission to spread the word about interviews.

IV. Meeting ended at 5:35 pm.

Respectfully Submitted,
Daniel Kantor
SAFC Clerk, Office of the Assemblies