As students and administrators consider the University's capacity to support a growing number of clubs and organizations, Duke Student Government has created a task force to examine the underlying funding system.
Chaired by sophomore Philip Kurian, the committee plans to examine methods to make funding for student organizations more efficient. Groups can now seek funds from about 12 different sources, depending on the organization.
Kurian, also a DSG legislator, said a top priority for his task force is receiving student input, which he hopes will be achieved through a series of town hall meetings jointly sponsored by the task force and the Student Organization Finance Committee.
"We're just going to talk about raising the student activities fee and hopefully getting a student voice on this," Kurian said. "Our goal in this task force isn't to take what [the Division of] Student Affairs thinks."
Last year, students and administrators--including Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta and former SOFC chair Vinny Eng, a seniorâ??devised a plan to bring funding for student groups under one umbrella organization. The plan called for a 15-member funding council that would distribute annual funds to eight subcommittees, each made up of student groups with similar interests.
"I think that students have said that we do a very good job of the enabling process," Moneta said. "If [clubs] go to register for an event, we help them register. But in terms of thinking about activities... about funding priorities, I don't think we've done a very good job."
Although Kurian said he liked some aspects of the plan, he said it is not feasible overall.
"You have at the minimum a total of about 15 people making these decisions. Right now, the SOFC has difficulty bringing about eight people to the table to make these decisions," he said.
Kurian said the proposed system would also have members that might be partial to a certain group. "Students on [SOFC] don't have a particular interest in any group," he said. However, he added, with members of student groups on the governing council to determine funding, "What group is going to say 'Take money away from me and give it to these other groupsâ??they need it.'"
Splitting these groups into committees under the system proposed last year may also force groups to identify themselves as a certain type of organization, Kurian added.
Senior Christina Hsu, president of the Asian Students Association, said she thinks there are too many hoops to jump through to get funding under the current system.
"Because the cultural fund has been set up, people automatically assume the cultural groups are taken care of, but that's not the case," Hsu said, adding that figuring out the funding process was also difficult.
She said, however, that the Office of Student Activities' workshops for student group treasurers have been helpful.
This year, with $35,000 from Campus Council--which has refocused its funding efforts exclusively on residential programmingâ??and SOFC's new capacity to fund up to 100 percent of a student organization's request, SOFC chair Pushpa Raja hopes her group can meet more requests for funds. "For smaller budgets, I think it will definitely help. We obviously won't be able to fund 100 percent of everything," said Raja, a junior.
The task force--working closely with Raja--would also like to increase communication among funding sources and advising for student groups on organizing funding, Kurian said.
"[Groups] will send one budget to SOFC, and then they'll send a completely different budget to the University and Cultural Fund," Kurian said.
"I don't think there's much merit in merging these funds because they have different purposes.... We don't think there's enough communication among the funding sources."
One way to increase that communication may be through creating uniform budget request forms, which students could submit to both the Office of Student Activities and any funding source to request money, Kurian said.
The task force might also revamp the SOFC website to make it more accessible.
Rick Gardner, director of the Event Advising Center, said although his office offers financial advice to student groups, many organizations approach the center too late for him to help save them money.
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