@Anonymous I think this might be a decent argument if student groups were rolling in money, but the fact is that student life departments on campus are far beyond miserly. I’d be willing to bet that more money is spent on the student life infrastructure than on the direct group activities, and that the disparity is way more extreme than at other schools.

I’m the Treasurer for a small student group. Talked to one of our 2-3 mandatory, paid and absentee advisors (note that this is for a group with under 50 students) a couple of days ago. I halfheartedly mentioned how there’s an absurd amount of bureaucracy required to do anything as a student group. His straight-faced response? “Well, it’s because [we] really try hard to make sure that student groups are autonomous.” This, after we worked for a year to get SGB approval, solely so that we could get UEM’s and OCAE’s blessings to audit every slice of pizza we serve and scrutinize every meeting. As if we only got to the Ivy League by having uninterested grad students hold our hand every step of the way.

By the time your funding is slowly “permitted” by UEM, OCAE, grant programs/student governments, your governing board, your own e-board and whoever else, it’s a wonder there’s any left at all. Kudos to CQA for saving money and eventually squeezing well-deserved blood out of a stone. Rethink student group funding, anon…undergrad life is hard-up for money in plenty of areas, but frankly there’s no student group funding left to cut. A huge student life funding increase would cost the university relatively little. There is no reason why an event like this should be rare. Absolutely none.