Author: Lilliane Ballesteros
During the Wednesday, Feb. 20 Senate meeting in Cushman Board, ASOC Senate members doled out an extra $2,500 for a Lupe Fiasco concert, scheduled to take place in Thorne Hall on the night of Feb. 27. The $30,000 funding request, which was originally granted $1,045 by the Senate’s funding algorithm, was trumped after organizer Julian Mitchell (junior) told the Senate that the event organizers needed more money to “break even.” “Money is an inevitability that we need,” he said.
The Senate asked Mitchell if Black Student Alliance (BSA) would be getting funding from any sources and asked how much they needed from ASOC to make the event possible. Mitchell said other funding sources included transport Skate Apparel, Eagle Rock Underground, some outside sources in the music industry, Programming Board and the Intercultural Community Center (ICC). Mitchell also commented on the concert’s purpose, saying the concert would be part of a three-day awareness on prostate cancer.
In an e-mail response to the Weekly, Junior Class Senator Patrick McCredie explained his reason for voting to raise the amount given to BSA for the Lupe Fiasco concert. “I voted in favor of the Lupe Fiasco event for two reasons,” he said. “First, the total requested amount for the Lupe Fiasco concert was $30,000, of which they only received $1,045 from ASOC. Relative to their total requested amount, they received only 3% of their initial request.
“Secondly, for event requests of this magnitude (of such large attendance numbers), the Funding Algorithm is unable to generate appropriate allocation figures. Although they occur infrequently, Senate must take this factor into consideration. Thus, I felt it was fair to provide additional support for this initiative.”
The BSA funding approval came after the Senate voted against raising the recommended funding for Steez Magazine. Steez Editor-in-Chief George Denny (senior) requested that the Senate increase their original suggested funding of $1,660.62 to at least $1,900 in order to produce three full issues for this semester. Denny pointed to Senate’s $2,937 approved funding of Steez for the fall semester, an amount that was $1,277 more than was granted by the algorithm this semester. Last semester, Steez requested funding for four issues. This semester, Steez requested funding for three issues.
At the Feb. 13 Senate meeting, Senators reversed a funding vote for Steez Magazine after Denny said he wanted to request more than the $1,660.62 allocated for three issues for the spring semester, saying that the funds could only get him “an issue and a half.” The vote was tabled to the following meeting after Denny showed up too late to make an argument for more funding before Senators voted to approve the algorithm suggested amount.
During the voting process, Campus Wide Senator Santiago Mendez (sophomore) questioned the extra funding for BSA, asking whether it was “unfair” to fund BSA more money than Steez Magazine, as both event’s funding were determined under similar guidelines. Both requests had large expected attendances, something that has often been a problem for the algorithm. The Senate has previously had problems with the algorithm process when dealing with large funding requests.
According to ASOC minutes from an Oct. 17 Senate meeting, Senators questioned the algorithm in terms of large funding requests. The issue came up when, according to the meeting notes, “Santiago asked what the purpose of the algorithm was if the Senate merely continued to override it, and recommended a separate system for large events instead of constant argument.”
Junior Class Senator Mike Myers addressed the precedent the Senate would be making by allotting the Lupe Fiasco concert organizers $1,500 more than the algorithm’s original suggested amount. “We have to be confident enough to explain it,” he said.
Senate currently does not have guidelines for exceptions to the algorithm. McCredie, who also serves as the ASOC Finance Co-Chair for the Funding and Public Relations Committee, said, “Basically it is on a case-by-case basis . . . times where we override it are cases where Senate feels that there is a greater need for support or commitment of a particular event and Senate deems it necessary to override the algorithm at their discretion.”
Senate has previously discussed fixing the algorithm, which has been in place for a year and a half. “At the end of this semester, we are going to be talking with [James] Gillan [senior], Mike Myers and myself and we are going to be devising a solution to handle the large events that exceed the capabilities of the algorithm,” McCredie said.
ASOC funding priorities for clubs and organizations include the mandate that the event be on campus, that the event be community service oriented, cultural and/or educational and that it be open to all students. Projected attendance also plays a central role in the Senate’s decision of how much to fund an event. This was an issue when deciding attendance figures for Steez Magazine. “[A]fter deliberations within the Funding Committee and meeting with Steez representatives, I found the attendance figures to be quite generous,” McCredie said.
“Under the Finance Committee guidelines, applicants who are requesting funds for ‘recurring events’ (for example: multiple magazine publications throughout the semester) need only apply once for all anticipated events during the semester. In the case of Steez . . . their cumulative projected attendance was 1,500 (500 people per 3 issues). However, upon questioning Steez whether this was an accurate attendance figure, it became apparent that discerning total readership was difficult. Given [that] the ‘projected attendance’ parameter of the Funding Algorithm can vary the total allocated amounts considerably, I felt that Steez’s 1,500 attendance figure provided a sufficient boost to their recommended appropriation.”
Another circumstance for overriding the algorithm is when Senators deem an event especially beneficial to the campus and believe that the algorithm has not allocated enough money, something that usually happens when a club submits a large funding request. “If Senate believes that an event is a good use of their money, they still have the right to override the algorithm,” Assistant Director of Student Life and ASOC Advisor Kenna Cottrill said. Deciding to what extent an event falls under the funding guidelines is left to the Senators discretion.
Campus Wide Senator Rob Calderon (sophomore) commented on the Feb. 20 voting process for Steez Magazine and BSA’s Lupe concert, saying, “The way [the Senate] said in the meeting was basically the Lupe Fiasco concert was one major event benefitting a lot of students and having a lot of external benefit as they didn’t see that Steez would have as much of a benefit for much of the campus, which is kind of an arbitrary thing, depending on whose opinion and saying who is benefiting from what.”
Other Senators explained the reasoning they took when voting: “I am not too inclined to raise [the] initial allocation unless I believe that the club event will have a major impact. This is exactly why I voted ‘no’ for the extra allocation for Steez Magazine and abstained when Rob Calderon asked for only a $120 increase,” First-Year Class Senator Tilak Gupta said in an e-mail response to the Weekly. “I felt that if we made this one exception, then all the other clubs would be justified asking for a little extra money. But, as you pointed out, I did vote for the extra allocation for the Lupe concert. I think the concert is one of those major event exceptions. While Steez Magazine has amazing articles, the Lupe concert is themed around a serious disease.”
As the semester continues, the Senate will continue to work on the algorithm and try to improve its functionality, especially in regards to larger funding requests. “I think what Senate needs is to continue to develop the policies and procedures when the algorithm doesn’t work,” Cottrill said. “It doesn’t work in all si
tuations; Senate has to use their discretion at those times in order to do what it thinks is best.”
Another issue that the ASOC faced was trying to schedule the first General Assembly (GA) meeting of the semester. As of Feb. 20, GA Co-Chairs Paolo LeCosulich-Schwartz (junior) and Noel Hollowell (sophomore) had not scheduled a speaker for the first GA meeting. “We’re still looking for people to show up,” Hollowell said. “We’re really trying to push forward.” According to Occidental’s Student Government Constitution, “The General Assembly shall meet at least 10 times per semester.” Some Senators are worried that the GA will not fulfill this requirement if they do not start meeting. “Right now, I just want to do all we can to get the first GA meeting to happen,” Sophomore Class Senator Andrew DeBlock said.
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