Editorial: Multiple funding sources

Last week, Campus Council voted to reclaim $35,000 in student programming fees from Duke Student Government's Student Organizational Finance Committee that it had given to SOFC last year. This move will benefit student groups by providing more options and needed flexibility in the funding process.

Next year, Campus Council will have $35,000 to distribute and SOFC will have $55,000 in programming funds. This means that the total amount of funding available for student groups will not decrease, and dividing up these funds will have several immediate benefits for student groups next year, provided Campus Council can avoid problems of inefficiency that have characterized the SOFC in the past.

SOFC's primary shortcoming is the length of time it takes to process student funding requests. SOFC meets sporadically throughout the semester and must have all funding proposals approved by the DSG legislature before the money can be given to students. Campus Council meets once every week and does not have to submit its funding decisions to be approved by anyone else. Campus Council has the capability to process requests and get money to students quickly. This would increase efficiency and take some of the pressure off SOFC by decreasing the volume of requests it must review.

Distributing funding responsibilities to the two organizations will also benefit student groups that may have been denied funding in the past. If a group is turned down by either SOFC or Campus Council, it can then petition the other. This will prevent valuable student groups from falling through the cracks.

The new funding system with two primary funding sources is superior to both of the University's most recent systems, where funding was controlled by several individual house councils or solely by SOFC. In the house council system, money was spread too thinly to be accessible, and in the SOFC system, the organization meet to infrequently and required too much oversight to be effective. The new system strikes a good compromise, provided that Campus Council and SOFC can work in conjunction and not against one another.

The mission of SOFC is to oversee the distribution of programming funds to student groups on campus. However, until SOFC can find a way to speed up its allocation process to meet demand, the two source system will serve students well.