Student groups Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment (PAVE) and Student Leadership Program (SLP) were deemed eligible by the Student Services Finance Committee to receive money from the General Student Services Fund for the next two years.
Committee member Cale Plamann, the lone hold-out in the 7-1 SLP vote, insisted that SLP did not meet the funding criteria calling for a majority of the student group's time to be used providing ""direct student services.""
Plamann refused to consider the time that the group's volunteers contributed to the task of ""direct student services"" and only considered the time that the groups' staff, paid by the fund, contributed.
""I really am only looking at who we are giving money to,"" Plamann said. ""And if their time is being spent with its focus on direct services.""
The other members of the committee disagreed with Plamann and most stated that they considered volunteers' time in their own assessments.
PAVE won their eligibility very quickly, with an 8-0 vote. Committee member Aliyya Terry summed up her reason's for PAVE's essentially undisputed eligibility decision.
""When you just look at the requirements for meeting eligibility, PAVE hits those requirements,"" Terry said. ""They meet the numbers in the direct service requirements, the accountability requirements, and the general requirements for meeting eligibility.""
SSFC Chair Matt Manes called it ""all-in-all a pretty fair"" meeting for a committee in which nearly all the members cast their very first eligibility vote.
Movimiento Estudantil Chicano de Aztalan (MEChA) also made their pitch for eligibility. MEChA sponsors the cultuARTE program, which provides cultural art workshops to student groups on campus. The group has received funding for several years, and was granted nearly $70,000 from the GSSF for 2010-'11.
Heidi Freymiller presented the eligibility case for The Working Class Student Union (WCSU) last night. According to Freymiller, the group was founded to serve ""working class and first-generation students at the UW"". The group has been granted funding for two consecutive years, and received about $58,000 for 2010-11.
SSFC will make decisions regarding eligibility for MEChA and WCSU Monday.
