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Recommendations for the next SOC

April 30, 2010

by Danny Garcia

After being on the Student Organizations Committee (formerly Organizations Budgeting Board and Charting and Budgeting Board) for two years, I have gained a bit of insight and opinion on the functioning of the student group budgeting process. Undeniably, there has been much said about the process this year, with many groups openly voicing their opinions on the procedure.

Even though hindsight is 20/20, there is some merit in the complaints and the process should be reexamined. The budgeting process is a messy situation that will never be able to make everyone completely happy, but at the very least it can be improved for next year.

The first glaring problem with SOC is the difficulty of filling the committee seats. SOC generally does nothing the first semester and then does a lot for about a month in the spring. This loses applicants who want to be involved now and those who are deterred from the grueling deliberation weekend in the spring.

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to increasing interest in the board. Perhaps increased advertisement or taking applicants to other boards and offering them positions to open seats on SOC could help. The seats should be filled, but they should not be filled by uninterested persons. That said, paying members of SOC would be a horrible idea. Payment runs the risk of attracting only members who need money, without interest in the process, or of increasing SOC applicants at the expense of applications to non-paying boards.

Eventually, the board is assembled and the time comes for groups to create budget proposals. With this, it needs to be a standardized format and that form needs to be explicitly clear to student group leaders. Forums and the willingness to answer questions is not enough. They are important, but a clear set of instructions and tips would help wonders. Distributing that with the budget form would put it exclusively on the group leaders to understand the process. These instructions would explain how to fill out the form, how to prioritize appropriately, warn of the danger of cell cut-off in Excel, and other important tips from the board and Student Organizations Coordinator.

As for the interviews, five minute Q&A is the best option, though it should be supplemented with a typed explanation of their budget and priorities that might not be conveyed in the application or revealed during the Q&A. Make sure it has a word count instead of page limit—ten size font is hard to read.

Regarding the interview time length, any increase would be unreasonable. There were over 70 groups that applied for budgets this year. At five minutes each, that is nearly six hours of interviews. If the interviews were bumped to ten minutes, that would be 12 hours. Ten minutes might sound good to individual groups, but it is important to keep in mind that board members need to find time out of their schedules to attend the interviews, and it is difficult enough as it is. Also, board members get tired, and the quicker the process goes, the more likely good questions will be asked and the board will be more focused.

Overall, the process works best as a board making the decisions in a single weekend. Any longer would water down the process and become too difficult to coordinate with schedules. A single weekend is the most efficient way.

There is always a risk of underlying bias or prejudice among the board members, but, like all other boards, the student body needs to have faith that the members will uphold integrity and check their bias at the door. Otherwise, the entire idea of student government might as well be scrapped.