The fate of more than $2 million from university funds and students' activity funds is now in the hands of a University Park Allocations Committee (UPAC) three-year veteran.

UPAC members selected Greg Heleniak as the 2006-07 chairman of UPAC on Tuesday night.

The chairman, the top student office in UPAC, is the only student UPAC member who knows the running total of the amount of money remaining in the UPAC account for club funding. General UPAC members are notified only when the balance runs out.

The chairman is also the "voice of UPAC" -- the only student member who is permitted to speak to the media.

Current UPAC Chairman Keyur Shah said Heleniak served as chairman of two UPAC subcommittees: the student contact team and the operational allocation team.

Shah said Heleniak was one of three candidates for the position.

"His breadth of experience has definitely set him apart," Shah said.

The UPAC chairman must have at least one year of experience on UPAC and must be appointed to next year's committee, staff assistant Galen Chelko said. Members of this year's committee selected next year's chairman, she said.

Heleniak could not be reached for comment by press time yesterday.

Chelko, who is not a student nor a member of the committee, said the next action for next year's committee will be the election on April 11 of the subchairs of UPAC's four committees: the programming allocation team, the operational allocation team, the student contact team and the student relations team.

UPAC members run only for the position of subchair, and the specific team that each one leads is decided by the current leadership and next year's chairman, Chelko said.

Shah said next year's leadership will assign UPAC members to the teams in the fall.

Chelko said members of UPAC's seven-member summer committee will also be selected soon. She said volunteers from next year's committee are sought first for the summer committee, but members from this year who are not graduating are asked to join if there are still positions open. If positions are still open after that, applications will be solicited from the student body, she said.

Chelko said the amount of money available for UPAC to allocate this summer will not be known until all students have enrolled. She also said the amount of money UPAC will receive this fall will not be known until late summer.

"The number we get is just a projected number anyway," she said.

Chelko said applications for funding for this summer and this fall have been available since February. She said UPAC had already received eight to 10 applications for this summer and one or two for the fall.

Chelko added that UPAC is finished allocating money for this year.

Shah said UPAC will begin allocating for the summer once some "big budget allocations" for this fall are finished. He said the last allocating meeting will be April 18, and any remaining summer budgets after that meeting will be considered by the summer committee.