By KELLY KULTYS

ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR

On Saturday, Nov. 17, the Budget Committee, which falls under the discretion of both the United Student Government (USG) and the Student Life Council (SLC), hosted its bi-annual Budget Day. The purpose of this day is to allocate funds from the Student Activities Fee to the clubs who submitted requests.

The committee, chaired by Muhammad Sarwar, GSB ’14, USG vice president of finance and chair of the budget committee on SLC, spent over 13 hours figuring out how to divvy up the $155,000 the committee had at the start of the day.

“We want to give everyone a fair and equal chance,” Sarwar said. “Right now, according to my math, we’ve funded about 46 percent or so. We did much better than last time. Last spring we funded about 28 percent.”

The Budget Committee is made up of both USG and non-USG members and has two faculty advisors, Natalia Fernandez, the assistant director for leadership and commuter student services and Jenn Lackie, the assistant director for student organizations. This year, the committee has 11 students, with representatives from all four grade levels and the two schools, Fordham College Rose Hill and the Gabelli School of Business.

“I like to think that I provide a little bit of a different perspective, because if you look at the composition of the committee, there are 11 of us and seven of us are from GSB,” Matt Freeze, FCRH ’13, said. “That’s great because they’re number people, and on Budget Committee you need some of that. I kind of provide a different perspective. You need to think in terms of the value of what the events are going to bring.”

Over 65 clubs applied for some type of funding for various purposes, including hosting events, running programs, leading trips and bringing in guest speakers.

The way the budget process works is that club treasurers fill out their “budget packets.” These packets consist of what the club hopes to fund for the upcoming semester. They have to prioritize these events based on their level of importance.

“One of the things we’re really careful about is we hate being programmers,” Sarwar said. “It’s not our job.”

Clubs are also required to show proof and evidence of where they are planning to spend the money, what they estimate the cost to be and why they think their event is a good idea.

“Lack of documentation is the biggest reason [clubs don’t get money],” Sarwar said. “It makes our job easier, but it’s bittersweet because we want to fund them.”

With over 100 clubs on campus and over 65 of them petitioning for money, the Budget Committee sometimes has to make difficult decisions due to the limited funds.

“We had about a hole of $67,000,” Sarwar said. “In a perfect world, if we had the money, we would fund that amount.”

The easiest way for a club not to receive funding is to have an improperly-completed budget packet. Once the committee removes those packets that are not completed properly, they allocate money for each correctly-documented event, without factoring in how much money they have at first. After they complete that, if the committee has over-allocated, they have to step back and make cuts.

“We have to go back and look at them holistically and see what makes the most sense to fund,” Sarwar said.

The committee takes into account how the program or event will benefit the community, how much different aspects cost and how important the event is to the club.

“One of the new things we did this year was ask the clubs to prioritize,” Sarwar said. “So if you are asking for 10 different events, go through one through 10 and tell us which is least important and which is most important, which makes it easier for us.”

If a club does not get funding, it can still attend the Budget Committee’s weekly meetings to appeal for the money. If there is money from kickbacks from clubs or leftover funds, the committee can then allocate the money to the club.

As for this Budget Day, the committee finalized its preordained budget for next semester. The budget will be presented at the SLC meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 5, where they will vote to approve the Budget Committee’s allocations.