Last week, new Student Involvement staff members informed Student Government advisors of a buried funding rule that past Senate sessions had not been enforcing. The rule states that when student organizations request money, they must be sure to not specify those funds will go to a direct donation.
Molly Mueller, student body treasurer and fourth-year studying political science, and Zeenat Nadvi, chairperson of the Senate Appropriations Committee and fourth-year studying biomedical and health sciences engineering, clarified how the rule was missed by previous sessions, and why it is just being enforced now.
Mueller said that this is the first time that Student Involvement staff members have enforced the rule on appropriating club money for donations.
“This is new to us,” Mueller said. “We have never operated on this policy before. They came down to us from our advisors and from the Student Involvement offices to make sure all of the organizations, not just Student Government, have been following rules. Some student organizations had already applied for funding, so we needed to inform them that they need to change line items and that sort of thing. But it is basically that we cannot give money to student organizations to donate because we do operate under student fees.”
Mueller said that she does not think it will affect club participation on campus because appropriations can still fund internal needs of the student organization.
“There are a lot of clubs that do donate, but it won’t affect our appropriations as much as you would think initially,” Mueller said. “We can fund other things that clubs need. We can do advertising for events, or we could do anything internal that the club needs. So it really doesn’t impact clubs in terms of the organization’s appropriation process as much as it may seem. We were able to help a couple of organizations change their line items, so they do get some money.”
According to Mueller, when the new Student Involvement staff members were going through the rules, they discovered this particular one and decided that it needed to be followed. However, Mueller is not sure why members of Student Government have not known the rule prior to that.
“I think it was just completely missed the first time,” Mueller said. “I had never heard of this policy, and I’ve been involved with appropriations since freshman year. This is something that is coming down from the larger university, not something internal.”
Mueller emphasized that clubs will still receive funding so long as they are benefitting NC State students.
“I don’t think that they are really going to feel it, or feel like they are in any way unwelcomed on campus because they can definitely still receive appropriations money,” Mueller said. “Pretty much anytime there is value added to NC State students, we can fund it. It isn’t about encouraging or discouraging students to do a particular thing. It’s really about making sure State’s finances are in the clear.”
Nadvi talked about how appropriations distributes money to student organizations.
“We consider how much impact an event will have,” Nadvi said. “That is one thing we look at but it isn’t the only thing. We still look at how much impact the organization will have on the community, even in general, not only NC State. If it helps the Raleigh area, that is something we look at positively, as long as it is not a direct donation.”
Nadvi also discussed the potential impact the rule will have on the committee’s functions.
“I don’t think it impacts how appropriations looks at organizations, and how we score them,” Nadvi said. “Instead of giving clubs money for direct donation, we can give them money for advertising. It doesn’t necessarily influence how much money that organization will get.”
Both Mueller and Navi clarified that from now on, the newly enforced rule will be a matter of changing line items when requesting funds from appropriations and will not generally affect club functions.
