By Zack Sampson, News Staff
Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity leaders announced last week they will not have PikeFest this fall because they were denied funding by the Student Government Association (SGA) Finance Board.
The Finance Board denied Pi Kappa Alpha’s fifth annual PikeFest request for $49,970 on July 14, citing severe unpreparedness and incompleteness in the group’s budget proposal. Members of the fraternity have placed much of the blame for this decision on SGA, saying they thought the organization was working against them this year.
“We’ve had this show four or five years in a row and never really had any push back from SGA and this year, especially, we’ve gotten an unprecedented resistance,” Nick Pigott, Pi Kappa Alpha’s event and social chair, said. “It almost seemed like they were working against us instead of advocating for us.”
But the Finance Board said failure to answer budget questions and a scheduling conflict, not lack of cooperation, was to blame for PikeFest’s cancellation.
SGA Comptroller Anthony Golia said Pi Kappa Alpha originally sought to present to the board on July 7 for a September event date. For SGA to grant an organization time in front of the board Golia said presenters need to first attend a workshop and receive signatures from their program manager and faculty adviser.
Pi Kappa Alpha failed to complete either of these steps, so Golia said he extended the deadline and waived the fraternity’s workshop requirement. Pi Kappa Alpha still could not obtain the signature of their faculty adviser, Amal Shumar, because she was on her honeymoon, according to fraternity president John Coogan. After missing the second deadline, they were not allowed to present and therefore could not request a September date.
Following their first failed attempt, Pi Kappa Alpha tried again to schedule PikeFest, this time for an October date. They presented a full budget proposal for Oct. 1, however, Tastemakers Presents, a similar concert event, was also scheduled for this day in the same place, Centennial Common.
Golia said the board only had enough money to fund one of the two concerts and chose Tastemakers because its “budget was more concrete” with more definite price quotes.
“When comparing Tastemakers and PikeFest, Pike’s quotes were generally confusing, their budget requests were more asking for a general budget, like, ‘This amount will work for us,’” Golia said.
Tastemakers requested $44,850 and was approved $45,845 according to Finance Board Meeting Notes posted on SGA’s website.
In its official memo regarding the decision to deny funding for PikeFest, SGA wrote that “the Board felt the group was severely unprepared to answer several questions pertaining to the strength of their quotes,” and Pi Kappa Alpha’s request “was in direct competition to a similar event in the same location.”
Pi Kappa Alpha’s primary presenter, Kyle Knieste, said he found the claim he was unprepared “insulting,” because he also presented to the Finance Board about PikeFest last year without issue.
“They said I was under-prepared when I answered a question on budget,” Knieste, who is also Pi Kappa Alpha’s external vice president, said. “I honestly didn’t even know where they got that from because I went through everything meticulously beforehand and got a quote from everything.”
Knieste’s budget proposal, which he released to The News, included artist quotes for The White Panda and Major Lazer, two electronic acts Pi Kappa Alpha hoped to bring to campus.
The 2011 proposal process was far different than the 2010 process, Knieste said. Last year, he said the process “was very informal,” but “this year was more of a fight.”
Golia said the 2011 Finance Board probably asked more questions, so he could see how Knieste may have found the budget proposal more intense.
“I think it could be a change in members,” he said. “This year’s members are doing their jobs, and they want to have a full understanding of events. Even if, in an ideal world, we have more money to give out, I still think that, on the whole, they feel it’s their duty to understand stuff and not just rubber stamp it.”
After entering this year’s proposal, Knieste said he was also annoyed to see Finance Board members eating during his presentation.
“If you’re trying to keep it professional, just don’t eat in a meeting, because one of the kids was eating a sandwich and asked me a question that I had just given an answer to,” he said. “I wanted to be like, ‘If you weren’t eating your sandwich, you would’ve known,’ but I can’t say that.”
Meetings generally run four to five hours, Golia said, so it is not uncommon or against the rules for members to eat in session.
Knieste said the fraternity additionally attempted to organize a jointly run, back-to-back concert weekend with Tastemakers to minimize scheduling conflict.
Kyle Risley, Tastemakers’ president, said the two organizations did obtain quotes for a joint concert weekend and hoped it would attract more students with cross-promotion.
“We did get the reduced quotes that we anticipated, so we did bring that to the attention of the finance board,” Risley said. “We had, I think, a cost savings of between $4,000 and $5,000 that we’d be able to achieve by collaborating on the events.”
But Golia said the concert weekend proposal was incomplete and lacked the space confirmation from the Office of Campus Activities needed for the Finance Board to consider the event.
“The whole collaboration with Tastemakers came in sort of haphazardly when the request was already submitted,” he said. “We didn’t have any guarantee that it would even be feasible on Campus Activities’ end for them to get booking of Centennial both days.”
Golia said the Oct. 1 conflict should never have even occurred, and was a significant obstacle for PikeFest’s approval.
He said the scheduling process goes through the Office of Campus Activities, which scheduled both groups for the same space the same day.
“We were told from Tastemakers’ program manager that Campus Activities would try to research whether or not they could do a Saturday and Sunday thing, or the Finance Board would have to pick one over the other, which that’s not really our job to pick one over the other, so I was a little unsettled by that,” Golia said. “We were in a tough place because we have to judge the request as it’s presented, and we can’t say, ‘Here’s money for both of you, hopefully it works out.’”
Golia exchanged emails with Sarah Weiner and Chiquita Baylor, assistant directors of Campus Activities regarding the conflict, and was concerned that SGA would have to choose between two premier annual events on-campus.
Based on his understanding, Golia said the space initially was given to Tastemakers and then the office “gave it to Pike,” as well.
“I don’t want to say accidentally, but it had to be an accident, so we went off of Tastemakers having space confirmation,” he said.
Campus Activities officials were unable to comment before deadline Wednesday evening.
Golia said the Finance Board only had enough funds to support three major October proposals and four groups submitted plans, including the two concerts and guest speakers sponsored by Delta Phi Epsilon and Sigma Delta Tau. The scheduling conflict made PikeFest more susceptible to the resulting cut, he said.
“I can’t speak whether or not they would have had approval,” Golia said. “It definitely would have had a better chance, given that was one of the two reasons it was denied.”
