By Steve Babcock

Approximately 30 representatives from different student groups attended the Student Government Association Budget Review Committee’s (BRC) final treasurers’ workshop Wednesday to secure a hand in the growing Student Activities Fee pot.

As long as those 30 groups, presumably the 30 groups that regularly request SAF funding, register with the Student Activities Office, both BRC chairman Michael Benson and student activities Director Todd Shaver have said it appears that most student groups that want to receive funding will indeed receive it.

According to Shaver, most groups that did not attend the final mandatory session will not want funding because they aren’t “programming bodies,” or student groups that sponsor events to further their groups’ mission.

But it was apparent that some student groups that are programming bodies were waiting for the final meeting to fulfill their requirements for receiving funding.

“I had known from Benson that there was going to be another meeting,” said United Nations Association Treasurer Scott Quintal.

UNA works to put on Model UN and Model Arab League sessions from SAF funds.

Despite the workshop’s publicity, there was still a hint of confusion at the meeting about which student groups had to attend and which did not.

With the new system for SAF allocation — of which the treasurers’ workshops are a part — student groups are required to attend one of the sessions.

A representative from the NU Downhillers, however, the campus ski team, walked in late to the meeting thinking he had to attend, and would therefore lose money for his group.

“So this means I’m screwed,” he said rhetorically to Benson. “The e-mail didn’t give a time.”

Benson said the e-mail had said the session would be held during activities period.

Benson also said a member of the ski team already attended a prior workshop, and indicated that the group will be eligible for SAF funding.

All student groups who are seen as having “good standing” with the Student Activities Office, meaning they have attended a treasurers’ workshop and re-registered for the new year, can place a request to be reviewed by the BRC.

Despite the fact that student groups are eligible to receive funding, they have been dispelling criticism against the timeliness in the work ethic of the BRC, as well as issues with the new allocation system.

Under the new system, student groups request funding for individual programming rather than putting in requests for full budgets as they did in the past.

In theory, this individualized basis opens up the process to all student groups. In past years, a group needed to meet a certain amount of resource and need requirements to be allocated a budget.

With the SAF hike, though, there are currently more funds available than ever before for student groups to access.

For Progressive Student Alliance (PSA) co-advisor Stas Vysotski, whether student groups should be given money based on programming or an entire budget is a matter of logistics and time.

Under the new model, the student center has also changed its policy for reserving a room to hold an event that amounts to a group being required to reserve a room well before the group is notified of funding by the BRC.

“We had a whole fall of things planned,” said Vysotski. “It turns out that three weeks ago we had the money and we didn’t know it.”

Vysotski said PSA also had to go through a process which required refiling all their forms to eventually receive funding.

“In truth, the old process was much better when groups were given budgets. [Under the new system], it’s a guessing game every time you do it,” Vysotski said.

Despite the jump in the SAF pot, though, the Caribbean Student Organization (CSO) said that they felt their resources were limited under the new system.

“We’re not receiving as much funding as last year,” said CSO conference chair Deena Joachim, “so we’re limited to different events that we can do.”

Benson said he was willing to “stand by” the new model.

“It’s not perfect by any means. But I support programming above student groups. Having 29 percent of the people benefit from a fee everyone pays is unfair and unnecessary,” he said, referring to the number of the student population that has been figured to have received direct benefit from SAF funds under the old system.

Vysotski did say that his main grievance was the untimeliness of the BRC. The BRC ended up granting them all the funding they had requested, just not in time to reserve all the rooms needed for activities.

“The BRC has been very generous,” he said. “[The funding] has just been very, very late.”

The CSO also said that the BRC had been slow in its process to approve all the groups.

“We have shows coming up that we’ll need funding for, and we don’t know if we’re going to be getting it,” Joachim said.

Benson said the issue of BRC timeliness can be attributed to the new system, which required the treasurers’ workshops, which some groups did not attend until this week.

“This is the sixth week; it’s potentially late,” Benson said. “We wanted to give everyone a window to access the funds. I want everyone to access the Student Activity Fee.”

If the decreasing funds that student groups are complaining of become a reality, student groups could end up doing less despite the existence of a larger amount of funds.

This is troubling to students, like freshman biology major Nate Formel, who feed the SAF by paying tuition.

“If [the events] weren’t happening, I’d be less involved in Northeastern,” Formel said.