Last week, the University Park Allocation Committee finished distributing student funds for the 2000-2001 school year. The reason — no more money. Although there are still two and a half months left in the semester, any request for funding from this point on will be denied. This includes USG, who will have to handle this year's elections without UPAC funding.

Apparently the committee has already been inundated with more than 700 budgets from various organizations on campus, up from 600 during all of last year. Eddie Elizondo, UPAC overall chairman, said the reason for this is the growing student knowledge of the available funds. As of this school year, the student activity fee stands at $38 a semester per student, the lowest in the Big Ten.

Although the easy way out would be to hike up the fee significantly, which still might be needed, other options might make this unnecessary.

First, the committee should revise its first-come, first-serve policy. As more organizations continue to learn about the funding, there will be more requests and the well will continue to dry up earlier and earlier each year. Also, more pressure should be put on groups to raise money on their own whenever possible. Otherwise, organizations might get lazy and simply eliminate fundraising because they can get necessary — and sometimes unnecessary — funds from UPAC.

The committee should also investigate how the money is spent. According to Elizondo, $200,000 has been allocated for programming, with more than half of it accounting for travel taking place between Jan. 1 and April 25.

While some of it is undoubtedly important for certain organizations that deal with issues outside of State College, a close eye should be kept on the proceedings to make sure funds aren't being spent on unnecessary trips.

Monitoring groups would also reveal which ones have the most active members. Extremely active groups should be rewarded with extra funds, while relatively inactive groups should be given less.

Only after UPAC has done all it can to ensure that funds are used most efficiently and appropriately should it is consider an increase in the activity fee.