According to the Student Activities and Budget Advisory Committee budget for Financial Year 2013 $164,000 was allocated to Registered Student Organizations requesting extra funds.
In the first two SABAC meetings $28,086 of the contingency fund was spent on different RSOs funding travel and lecture series.
“We have spent roughly $30,000 so far,” said Chairperson Flora Lowe-Rockett in the third meeting of FY2013. “ We have a significant budget reduction for the year. The last thing we want to do is run out of money for the upcoming year.
The reduction Lowe-Rockett referred to was a loss of over $140,000 from FY 2012 to FY 2013. The forecasted budget for the contingency fund from which SABAC funds student organizations was over $300,000.
This loss is often due to shrinking funding from the University System of Georgia according to an interview with the Vice President of Student Success Services Dr. Jerome Ratchford last fall.
“Some of that money is based off of projections of student enrollment,” said Ratchford. This means that if enrollment increases so does funding to SABAC, and funding decreases if enrollment decreases.
Some RSO travel requests total almost $1,800 even though SABAC usually only awards $1200. There is no limit on events and some organizations have requested a total of $14,565.
In these cases, SABAC has a track record of only partially funding these requests. However, some partial requests have still been in the thousands of dollars.
An average of eight RSOs appear in front of SABAC to make their case each meeting. SABAC typically gives partial awards to these student groups.
“You don’t want a $25 meatball,” said Rosalyn Hedgepeth in an interview last fall. “Things look good sometimes, but then you have to look into them more and be critical.”
However, SABAC has awarded more than 60 percent of its total budget and has given out 72 percent of the financial funding requested.
The board asks that RSOs spend their seed money ($400 given to each RSO at the start of the financial year) before approaching SABAC for additional funds. However, RSOs will often earmark this money for smaller events or expenditures.
If interested in SABAC, student fees and funding or the policies of SABAC, information about the group can be found online at kennesaw.edu/ studentsuccess/sabac. shtml.
Public records of each board meeting are published at this site and a meeting schedule is available. SABAC meetings typically occur every other Wednesday during the semester from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. A follow- up on SABAC will be in the next issue.
I feel like SABAC should get more students opinions from the general student body. I know I want to know exactly where my money is going because there might be some cases when I do not want my money to go to that organization and I would love to see some proof from the RSO’s that they are actually using the money they receive from SABAC for the purposes they originally asked for.