A “Conversation” With the AFC

Recently, the Activities Fund Committee (AFC) held its annual hearing. The AFC is a group of four students who, along with Dean for Student Activities Julie King-Murphy, allocate that odd "Activities Fee" you or a parent pays each year. Thanks to the OG, I serve on this committee along with Lawrence Coffey while Carrie Ryan and Hannah Drinkard are representatives from the Student Assembly. We control the proverbial purse strings of organizations. The AFC distributes your tuition money among the various active student groups that request money, and there are a lot: from BACCHUS, to the Rugby Team, to the OCCU.  However, the AFC inevitably is asked for nearly double the amount of money they have to give out (and we have a nice chunk of change – about $200,000 – and that's accounting for a healthy sum given to the SOP).

The goal of this slightly patronizing article is to "apologize," in the Socratic sense, for the work of the AFC and achieve some openness; after all, we're spending your money. At the hearings, each organization has 10 minutes to essentially defend their worth as a club and to justify their often fairly high request for aid. It's not easy for the organization's leaders, and we're consistently impressed by people's passion and creativity. But, it's also not easy for us, given over 50 requests with only 10 minutes each… you do the math.

Beyond this, we are presented with the challenge of "trimming" a group's funding requests despite their glamorous visions in order to make sure we do not go over budget. It's not an easy task, and though we have surprising amounts of fun with it, it's a pretty intense process where the five of us passionately hash out arguments in advocacy or opposition of the funding of major and minor events, of clubs, club sports, religious and political groups.

I am writing for the club presidents who recently received e-mails from us as well as to the student body in general saying that we have sincerely done our best and spent significant (and impressive if you'll excuse me for saying it, considering that it's April) amount of time hoping that we have optimized the amount of enriching and meaningful activities on campus. You are always free to disagree because we probably—nay inevitably—got something wrong but I would politely ask that all complaints be handled with charity. We do have a budget, and since we live in a world of scarcity, cuts have to be made.

You may justly ask why four students and one Dean have the authority to allocate money to your organization, and I do have an answer: I simply don't know. It's a system that predates many of our tenures here, yet I would contend that it works fairly well. We'd love (and I mean it) to hear your thoughts and suggestions about this process, if you are so moved. Currently, the AFC does not announce its allocations other than to the individual groups receiving their group's specific funds (What do you think of that?). However, one change of note is that we will be presenting our budget allocations to the new Student Senate for a little bit of "Glasnost." We are genuinely committed to helping make exciting events envisioned and conducted by students happen in this little town. We have done our best given our circumstances, but if you find this whole process strange please consider inquiring with your new Senators.