The weekly Student Government Association meeting mainly consisted of spot funding allocations for two student organizations.
Alpha Phi Omega, Saint Louis University’s co-ed service fraternity, desired to travel to New Orleans for a Spring Break service trip.
SGA unanimously decided to aid APO in their travels by allocating $1,098 for the spring trip.
Last spring, the men’s club volleyball team approached SGA during the Annual Funding Process with anticipations to attend the yearly National Collegiate Volleyball Federation national tournament.
According to Financial Vice President Tim Janczewski, “roughly $1,200” was allotted in the spring for the tournament.
The team came back to SGA this fall with a request for $10,497.90 in additional funding for the team’s A and B squad to travel to Houston, TX for the tournament.
The team explained that they originally asked for funding without knowing the location of the tournament last spring because they did not want to lose out on a funding opportunity.
This is a contrary practice to what SGA desires from student organizations.
“During annual funding if [a group] doesn’t know the location we encourage groups to still write [the event] down but to not ask for funding,” Janczewski said.
“That is the ‘unforeseeability’ that we’re looking for when we receive a spot funding request.”
Team member Jake Haegele said that the club would have acted in this preferred manner, if they were informed of it.
“Our funding buddy provided little guidance about forming the budget,” Haegele said.
“We did not know we could put down that we didn’t’ know the location of the tournament.”
Senator Matt Ryan said that a student organization could not be penalized for SGA mishaps.
“If we’re not doing our jobs as Financial Buddies we cannot then say ‘No, we’re not funding this’,” Ryan said.
Janczewski said that the funding guidelines have always been available to organizations, no matter if there was a lack of communication.
“I’m not trying to point blame at anyone but every group had equal opportunities to write their requests and it seems to be an accidental mistake but spot funding is not the time to make up for that,” Janczewski said.
The men’s club volleyball team was allocated $1,922.80 with a passing vote of 33-6.
