H -°, L 6° | Tomorrow: 
H 18°, L 6°The Associated Students of Madison Finance Committee has frozen funding on grants for Student Labor Action Coalition and revoked an event grant for a committee of Wisconsin Union Directorate to emphasize the need for student organizations to follow their policies.
According to Student Services Finance Committee Legal Counsel Kurt Gosselin, policy violations among Finance have not been a huge issue in previous years.
Finance offers events, travel, operations and a more recently implemented open funds grant to registered student organizations who apply by a certain deadline, according to Finance Chair Matt Beemsterboer.
“The only time a [registered student organization] generally gets denied funding is if they don’t show up to a grant hearing,” Beemsterboer said. “But even then we have allowed students to appeal that; it’s up to the discretion of the chair.”
He added there are very few student organizations that are denied funding as long as they are following ASM policies and procedures. One specific policy currently in contention is the policy for using funds for printing.
The policy, as stated in the ASM Financial Policies and Procedures guidelines, are specifically that “an ASM disclaimer and logo must be included on all publicly distributed materials and must be done at StudentPrint or another university print shop.”
“SLAC was an RSO when they applied for funding. They were granted funding last year — they used that money on these fliers, which they weren’t allowed to pay for. I don’t think they knew about it, and this has never been an issue before,” Gosselin said. “I don’t think they registered as a RSO this year, so they were just recently notified about frozen funds.”
According to Gosselin, the fliers SLAC printed off were to advertise a party for ASM elections, where it was assumed alcohol would be consumed, which is in direct violation of the policies and procedures.
“One of our members, during last year’s ASM elections, mistakenly printed out 50 copies of a poster through StudentPrint for a fundraising party. Estimating 10 cents per page, that’s $5.” said Jan Van Tol, UW senior and a member of SLAC, in an e-mail to The Badger Herald.
Van Tol added those posters were subsequently destroyed and were never posted anywhere. It was an honest mistake by that member, he said, and it was certainly never SLAC’s intention to spend ASM money on an election.
Van Tol added he did not expect the committee’s decision to suspend SLAC’s funding would have much of an impact on their work, but they intend to appeal the decision unless Finance can provide a better justification than the accidental misuse of a few dollars.
In the case of the WUD committee, $9,000 was cut from the Madison Music Festival event grant that was approved for this year and took place in September, according to Beemsterboer.
He said the committee failed to print the ASM logo and disclaimer on an ad they distributed to The Badger Herald and the Daily Cardinal. The committee voted unanimously to cut the entire funding for the event.
“We feel that was unwarranted. We respect their policies and procedures and know why they are in place, but it’s a grave punishment for a minor infringement,” WUD committee member Rose Gear said.
The WUD committee has already appealed the decision and was promptly denied. They are unsure of exactly the next step they will take, but a second appeal is possible as is taking the decision to Student Judiciary if “worse comes to worse,” Gear said.
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Is it so hard not to bite at the hand that feeds you and follow the rules? If someone was giving me money and was specific about how it would be used, I would surely know what those specifications were.
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As a member of the Madison World Music Festival planning committee, I see the ASM Finance Committee’s decision to revoke $9,000 of funding as an egregious misstep.
The Madison World Music Festival is one of the absolute best examples of diversity programming on this campus. We spend an entire year planning a festival that showcases cultures from around the globe. We include campus and community groups that further the local mission of global performance. We participate in a nationwide consortium of world music festivals to secure well routed, and fairly priced quality acts from groups that have, by and large, never before performed in Madison. The festival itself draws thousands of people to campus and to the Willy Street Fair.
While I understand ASM’s frustration that they, as a funding source of the festival, were not fairly represented in two print advertisements, I urge them to look at the larger picture when discussing the issue of revoked funding. The Madison World Music Festival is by no means only advertised in print and our sponsors were not represented in only that medium. ASM’s name was mentioned in each of our emcee annoucements, the festival banner (which hung behind the performers for each and every one of our acts and was viewed by thousands of festival-goers), in the printed and PDF version of the festival program (which can be accessed here: http://www.uniontheater.wisc.edu/theaterbMWMFguide_2311.pdf), and on each of the literally hundreds of copies of posters plastered around campus. I find that ASM’s decision to revoke the entire amount that they granted to the Madison World Music Festival to be a gross overstatement of their authority. I urge them to recognize that while mistakes (and not preconcieved missions to undercut their authority) are made, that the larger good of the festival and its efforts to include ASM as a sponsor should prevail. We appreciate the support of the Associated Students of Madison not just financially, but also as a sign that the UW-Madison campus community values the work that we do on their behalf.
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“I find that ASM�s decision to revoke the entire amount that they granted to the Madison World Music Festival to be a gross overstatement of their authority.” Basically, you are arguing that specific rules that are laid out by an organization don’t have to be followed if you break the rules for a good cause? Are you Robin Hood or something? Rules are rules, so learn to follow them. You argument is basically the same as Campus Women’s Center’s: ‘give us money because we are doing good things for the campus.’ Sorry, but you didn’t meet the requirement, so you don’t get funding. Plain and simple. Comparing the two is kinda like apples to oranges, though, because CWC’s funding issue is at least due to a complicated SSFC funding system. WUD’s failure is in adhering to the ASM finance committee’s much looser restrictions on grants. The error may be small (failure to include a logo and disclaimer on advertisements) but if it is such a small error, than why did it get overlooked in the first place?
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“Rules are rules, so learn to follow them”…. You’re quite a critical thinker huh? It’s pretty clear that you don’t understand the purpose of rules, which is to make sure or at least to have some guidelines and structure to effectively reach a goal. So those “rules” that SSFC has are to attempt to make sure that these organizations effectively offer students useful services or do “good things on campus”, which is “a good cause”. So guess what? SSFC’s “rules” are made to make sure that these things which you claim are irrelevant are accomplished. At a certain point you need to remember why rules are there in the first place. By assuming that “rules” and laws are the supreme authority, you are thinking very narrowmindedly.
Ultimately what’s worth more? Punishing SLAC over $5 and making sure that the “rules” are followed, or allowing SLAC to continue to work as an organization and offer its services to students, which is what the SSFC guidelines and policies were made for?
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8:34 PM - This isn’t SSFC business. This is Finance committee business.
Further, policy violations are violations nonetheless. It doesn’t matter the amount. SLAC violated policy and will have to follow the consequences.