The Multicultural Student Coalition appealed a student government committee’s decision to deny the group funding to the Student Judiciary Tuesday.
The Student Services Finance Committee denied MCSC in October when members of the committee determined less than half of the group’s time was spent “directly serving” students.
MCSC member Jensen Trotter said SSFC does not have a standardized method for determining what constitutes a “direct service,” saying SSFC representatives determined the group spent anywhere from 5.4 to 64 percent of their time directly serving students.
“The incredible range demonstrated from these hearings would be enough to convince any credible statistician that the system used to extract these findings is fundamentally flawed,” Trotter said.
Neibart said although SSFC members might interpret “direct services” differently, the committee does have a standardized process for calculating what percentage of a group’s time is spent on the services.
“When it comes down to it, groups could say anything is a direct service,” Neibart said. “It is then SSFC’s job to delineate what actually is.”
MCSC executive staff member Althea Miller said the method SSFC Rep. Cale Plamann used to decide the group spent less than half its time on “direct services” was subjective and unfair.
“The very fact that these arbitrary numbers needed to be applied is indicative of a broken process and insufficient eligibility criteria,” Miller said.
“He did his duty as an SSFC member to clearly identify what a direct service is and how much time a group spends on that direct service,” Neibart said.
The SJ has 10 school days to make a ruling on the case and determine if SSFC’s ruling was valid.
