The Eligibility Criteria Review Committee approved the final draft of criteria for groups applying for money from the General Student Services Fund in a meeting Tuesday.
“[The meeting] very well might have saved the criteria,” Student Services Finance Committee Chair David Vines said.
The GSSF is money that directly supports a year’s worth of services and programming for student organizations providing services to students on campus. Organizations must meet all of SSFC’s eligibility criteria to receive GSSF support.
Vines said he is happy about passing the draft in the committee’s “most productive meeting” and recognized the contributions from representatives of other student organizations.
“I think everybody did a really, tremendously good job,” Vines said. “We’re really committed to crafting criteria that … will serve a real benefit to the campus population.”
According to the proposed criteria, eligible groups cannot receive funds from other segregated fee-supported organizations or membership fees, which Vines said he was surprised the committee had not previously addressed.
“I’m actually kind of disappointed with myself for not making that more explicit earlier in the process,” Vines said. “That’s the reason I’m not writing these by myself.”
ECRC also replaced the requirements focused on the educational benefits of the Wisconsin Experience with its own definition of educational benefits, largely due to the Wisconsin Experience’s subjectivity. MultiCultural Student Coalition representative Olivia Wick-Bander said she was happy to see the replacement of the ‘direct service model’ in the final draft.
The committee also defined a ‘registered student organization’ as a group applying to the Center for Leadership and Involvement before an ECRC hearing. Vines said the process can be “a little bit slow” at the beginning of the year, and the new definition would help keep a group from losing its eligibility.
The committee also set a deadline before groups can re-apply for eligibility after committing intentional policy violations “since Sept. 1 of the previous year.”
The new criteria relates to when SSFC denied MCSC funding eligibility in late September 2013 after finding it guilty of violation.
Wick-Bander was the only member who opposed the final draft.
“There were some issues that we were talking about earlier that were just rushed through because people wanted to finish in two hours,” Wick-Bander said.
“My group has been held accountable for three years for an alleged policy violation, and none of the issues that we’ve faced were really, actually addressed, I think, in a way that was coherent, and that other groups will be able to avoid … the unbridled discretion of punishment,” Wick-Bander added.
The draft will now go to SSFC and Student Council.
