In its second such decision of the school year, the Associated Students of Madison's Student Services Finance Committee denied a diversity-related organization, the Diversity Education Staff, eligibility to student funding for the 2003-'04 school year.
DES, currently comprised of one full-time staff member, Michael Franklin, began in the 2000-'01 school year as a professional staff to support student initiatives and coalitions that exist around building and improving campus climate through diversity education.
Franklin said he was sure there would be a viewpoint neutrality appeal to ASM's Student Judiciary concerning Sunday's decision.
\What I saw was committee members not only considering misinformation but also an insincere attempt by some of the committee members to research the truth of current information and apply that to the task at hand,"" he said.
SSFC Chair Roman Patzner said he disagreed that the committee had violated viewpoint neutrality.
The vote ended with six committee members in favor of funding, seven against it and one in abstention. SSFC member Rob Staude abstained and Patzner cast the deciding vote when he voted to deny the group funding.
Patzner said the committee had numerous concerns with DES's eligibility, mainly a violation pointed out by Associate Dean of Students Jean Chagnon. In a letter to DES last October, Chagnon expressed concern that the group was not doing more than 50 percent of its work with areas of campus other than the Multicultural Student Coalition, a group with which DES is closely associated.
Job descriptions for DES employees provided to the committee clearly showed that they were working primarily with MCSC and not the campus at-large, Patzner said.
There were also questions from committee members as to whether the services DES offers are redundant with services already offered at UW-Madison.
""It seems like the administration is quite effective at providing these services that DES claims to provide,"" SSFC member Mark Baumgardner said. ""I think it's wrong to overcharge students and charge them twice for the same service.""
Franklin disagreed, saying DES is ""completely unique not only to the campus but almost to the nation.""
Last week, SSFC members denied funding for MECHA, a Chicano student organization, on the grounds that it did not meet certain criteria such as making all students on campus feel welcome.
Last year, SSFC was in the spotlight during its budget hearings and decisions process when diversity-related groups requested upwards of $1 million in funding. After weeks of deliberations and meetings that lasted until the early hours of the morning, the committee reduced the proposed budgets and decided on funding the Multicultural Student Coalition at $555,467, roughly half of what it asked for, and the Diversity Education Specialists at about $400,000.
""I think this committee is setting itself up for a discussion with the Dean of Students Office as to why they voted almost $400,000 plus to fund an initiative they said was very important and then turned around a couple of months later and denied eligibility to DES,"" Franklin said.
