The University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) is set to receive $36,800 in stopgap funding from Student Affairs to beef up its bank account.
UPUA is being given the additional funds after discussions between the student government's leadership and administrators in Student Affairs, including Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Sims. The discussions showed UPUA had no reliable way to secure money for programming and services at this time.
"The motive was ensuring that UPUA continues to thrive throughout the year," Sims said. "It's clear that UPUA lacks the money to do some things that students would expect student government to do. It's still a fledgling student government, and [UPUA President] Gavin [Keirans] and others made clear to us they needed this money."
Sims added he didn't think student government having to go "hat in hand" to the University Park Allocation Committee (UPAC) was an "ideal model." UPAC is the student-run board that dispenses student activity fee money to student organizations.
UPUA received $19,009.31 from UPAC earlier this fall. That money is restricted, primarily to a new copy/print machine and the salaries of its election officials. Additionally, the group's unrestricted bank account currently holds $1,126.99.
The $36,800 UPUA will receive is divided into two portions: $5,000 is ticketed for next semester's pilot program of the Tenant-Landlord Mediation Center. The rest is meant to go toward general programming purposes, Keirans said.
Through creating and maintaining the student activity fee handbook, the Student Activity Fee Board (SAFB) governs how the fee can be used. The 20-page document lays out the dollar amount of the fee, what it can be used for and how it should be allocated. Keirans, Graduate Student Association (GSA) President Alfonso Mendoza and Council of Common-wealth Student Governments Pres-ident George Khoury are among the students who are members of SAFB.
Keirans and Mendoza have talked this year about modifying the handbook to ensure UPUA and GSA would receive a permanent, yearly allocation of a certain percentage of the activity fee. At today's meeting of the SAFB, however, the focus is expected to change.
"The last meeting we talked about a resolution for 5 percent of the student activity fee," Keirans said. "But [today] is going to be the start of overhauling the activity fee process at University Park. [Today] is really going to mark the beginning of going through the handbook and sort of revolutionizing everything within it and making the activity fee process at University Park much more efficient."
UPUA Chairman of the Assembly Ralph Crivello added the current state of the board could be a problem as the group moves forward.
"There's no rules governing the board," he said. "There's no parliamentary document. That's a big problem. No one knows how to proceed to change things because we don't even have a grasp on how it works."
Despite the financial assistance his office gave, Sims said UPUA and GSA need to have some kind of consistent funding that can be counted on from year to year.
"I strongly believe that the University Park campus must have thriving, robust, ongoing, stable student governments," he said. "It's very important. I think it's impossible to imagine that happening unless the principal student government entities, UPUA and GSA, have reliable sources of funding, adequate to their needs."
