According to recently released documents, 12 campus organizations will be applying for funds from the new Funding Allocation Board.

Among the applicants are the Bryce Jordan Center, intramural sports in addition to the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA).

University Park Allocation Committee (UPAC), a student-run organization that formerly distributed all Student Activity Fee proceeds, will also join the petitioners in requesting funds from the Funding Allocation Board, which consists of both students and faculty.

UPAC will continue to fund individual student organizations.

The Funding Allocation Board (FAB), originally conceived by the Office of Student Affairs in January 2006, consists of seven voting students, three voting faculty members, a non-voting staff adviser and a student chairperson.

The board will advance recommendations to Vice President for Student Affairs Vicky Triponey as to how the Student Activity Fee, totaling at more than $3.5 million a year, should be distributed.

All Funding Allocation Board committee members are appointed by Triponey.

Michael Gilbert, assistant vice president of Campus Student Services, said the board will hold its first budget hearing March 24.

"At this point, we will have between six and eight groups coming before FAB on the 24th, with the balance appearing the nights of Wednesday the 28th and Thursday the 29th," he said.

Gilbert added that the budget hearings would be open to the public.

UPUA President Jay Chamberlin said that his organization's budget would be based entirely on its given Funding Allocation Board
allotment.

"[The Funding Allocation Board] gives organizations like the UPUA and the [Graduate Student Association] the ability to draw from student activity fee, which takes away from their need to fundraise," he said. "I don't believe that UPUA should be involved in fundraising."

Undergraduate Student Government President Nick Stathes said that he supports UPUA's acceptance of the university's student activity fee funds.

He also believes the Funding Allocation Board is a step away from student control of the activity fee.

"It gives students less power," he said. "When UPAC was in control of almost all of the [Student Activity Fee], if I was dissatisfied with how they were spending my fee, I could go to UPAC and complain to the president -- now if [students are] dissatisfied, they have no one to go to, because it's the administration who ultimately determines who sits on FAB."

Gilbert disagreed.

"I think FAB represents a fine model of staff and student partnership," he said. "Over the term that we are doing this work, we will evaluate how we've done."

UPAC chairman Greg Heleniak said that he does not feel that student rights have been curtailed.

"Since FAB is still a student majority, I still feel like the students' voice is well represented," he said. "In process, maybe it's changed, but the concept hasn't changed."