As of Tuesday night, University Park Allocation Committee's pockets are empty.

Eddie Elizondo, UPAC overall chairman, said, "As of Feb. 6, UPAC has finished allocating all student funds for the 2000-2001 year. For the remainder of this year, we are done."

UPAC is funded by the $38 a semester student activity fee that is the lowest in the Big Ten.

Elizondo said this is unfortunate because as much as the student activity fee is, it is still not a lot of money. He said UPAC is considering what to do for upcoming years with the fee.

He said they do not want to raise the fee, yet they realize that the fee is not meeting the needs that student organizations have.

Elizondo said UPAC has seen a yearly increase in requests for funding and that this year in particular there has been a tremendous growth.

At the end of the Spring Semester 2000, UPAC had received about 600 budgets. This year, as of Tuesday night, they had received almost 700 budgets with about two and a half months left in the semester.

"The amount of demand on student fund has dramatically gone up," Elizondo said.

Elizondo stressed that the funding they have is available on a first come, first serve basis.

He said UPAC has already allocated more than $200,000 for programming, with more than half of that for travel that is to take place between Jan. 1 and April 25.

He said one of the reasons that funds have run out so quickly is because of growing student knowledge of the funds available from UPAC.

"What we've been allocating is consistent with past years, although we've probably had to decrease slightly," he said about the average amount each organization receives.

A problem now exists in that student organizations do not have many options when they are in need of funds.

Undergraduate Student Government President Matt Roan said that, as of last night, USG had six or seven organizations come to its office and file requests for funding.

"We are not capable of filling these requests," he said. "There's not much else we can do. It's unfortunate that we cannot help other student organizations."

Roan stressed that USG also seeks funding from UPAC.

"We need roughly $9,000 for elections -- right now we don't even have enough for the running of USG," he said. "We've been put into a tough situation."

"Now we're just trying to figure out how we'll be running these elections without any UPAC funding," he added.

Elizondo said, "I think that's something we'll have to work for with USG."

He added that many student organizations came to UPAC earlier in the fall. He said many of the activities UPAC funds are ongoing such as the Distinguished Speakers Series and Late Night Penn State that take up funding early on.

Elizondo stressed that there are events being funded for the spring.

Avenel Joseph, treasurer of the Caribbean Student Association, said she went to UPAC for funding of the group's 24th annual Caribbean Experience.

"Every year, they have funded the entire event," Joseph said. "This is really disappointing."

Joseph said the event has brought in about 600 people from universities all over the country.

Joseph said the group's budget is $21,000 or more. She said the organization would look to all other cultural organizations on campus as well as stores from downtown State College. She said the group would also look to big corporations such as Pepsi.

"UPAC suggested we look to USG," she said. "I know that's ruled out because I've been to USG meetings and I've seen that they are tied down also."

Joseph said, "The question is, 'What do we do now?' "