Despite two recent, highly publicized controversies about student club funding, many students and student representatives still have little knowledge about how their student activity fees are allocated to AU clubs, leading to confusion over who is responsible for overseeing club activities and how much funding groups are allocated.
The first controversy began in late January when a petition to stop funding the National Coalition on Organized Resistance was circulated and submitted to the board of trustees and American University Club Council, the student-run organization in charge of allocating funds for all clubs on campus. The AUCC decided against any change in funding for NCOR after hearing presentations by pro- and anti-NCOR groups made before the Residence Hall Association, The Eagle previously reported.
Around the same time, the College Democrats were suspended and lost half of their annual allotment of funding because of bookkeeping discrepancies during the fall semester, The Eagle previously reported. The club was not accused of mismanaging the actual spending of the funds, but for simply not keeping the proper records of their spending and fundraising, and has since been reinstated as a club.
Despite these two recent episodes, students often know little about how the AUCC works, or what its functions and responsibilities are.
Florina Belorusels, a junior in the School of International Service, said despite being involved in Sigma Delta Tau, she had very little idea as to how the allocation process actually worked. Of the AUCC, Belorusels said she "didn't know we had one."
Samantha Reisberg, a junior in the School of Communication, said she doesn't think information about the AUCC, as well as the Student Activities office, is readily available.
"I couldn't tell you anything about either group," Reisberg said.
Members of the Student Government expressed similar sentiments. On the condition of anonymity because of the recent AUCC controversies, one student senator said of the AUCC, "I don't even know how it runs."
Inquiries to the office of Ben Murray, speaker of the Undergraduate Senate, for official comments were not addressed.
How the AUCC works
The purpose of the AUCC, as laid out in its constitution, is to fund all undergraduate and graduate clubs recognized by the Student Activities Office as necessary, provide programmatic support for all recognized clubs and serve as the primary arbiter of disputes between such clubs or within club leadership. The constitution also differentiates between associations and clubs, saying associations are eligible for more funding than clubs.
Budgets prepared by clubs have to be submitted to the seven-member board of the AUCC for approval. The board is made up of a chairperson, a co-chair and five representatives, one from each club "caucus."
All clubs, once officially recognized by the Office of Student Activities, are divided up into one of five categories, or caucuses: Academic and Professional, Religious and Service, Performing Arts and Social, Political and Special Interest Groups and Ethnic and Cultural. Within these caucuses, votes are taken at an open annual meeting as to which person will represent them as a voting member on the AUCC board.
Although this all exists in the AUCC constitution, changes to the way the board is put together are ongoing.
"The constitution as it sits right now is not a completely valid document," Josh Kramer, current AUCC president., said. "The constitution is not good because it makes this weird distinction between clubs and associations which is kind of ambiguous. ... Our main goal this semester is to make association status into something valid and attainable, or get rid of it completely, because now it's not really helping anybody."
AUCC board member selection
The process of selecting AUCC board members has been criticized for allowing favoritism on the board.
Ashley Mushnick, current Student Government president and former president of the College Democrats, has been involved with the AUCC for a long time. She said favoritism happens when students stack the board by having large numbers of students in different clubs show up to the meeting where the board is chosen. Because clubs cannot vote in absentia, whoever shows up is able to vote people onto the board to influence the amount of funds a popularly favored club might receive.
"I'm not saying that they are at all doing anything inappropriate; there just isn't much of a check," said Mushnick, adding that greater publication about the AUCC board elections, about both when they are and what happens at them, would address many of these problems.
Not all students feel the AUCC system is flawed.
Rachel Johnson, a junior in SIS and co-facilitator for Community Action for Social Justice, an umbrella organization that coordinates activities between several progressive clubs on campus, said that she felt the people who do show up and win deserve their positions on the AUCC board.
"[The meeting] could, of course, be better publicized," she said.
Uncertain roles and limited funding
The confusion over the constitution has also lead to ambiguity over the role of the AUCC in settling disputes among clubs. In the AUCC constitution, their role aside from allocating funds includes being "the primary arbiter of disputes between such clubs or within club leadership." However, club representatives say this rarely happens.
"The only two things the AUCC does to my knowledge [are] deal with appropriations and they have arranged for some deal with the Eagle to advertise things, but other than that I don't know of anything else. Anything else is generally handled by [Student Activities]," said Jason Dombrowski, a junior in the School of Public Affairs and president of the American University Foreign Policy Association.
Karen Gerlach, Director of Student Activities, did not return phone calls to comment.
A problem perceived across the board is simply not having enough money to satisfy all clubs.
"We have a lot of clubs and not enough money," Mushnick said.
The AUCC is annually allocated about $105,000 from Student Activity fees charged to every AU student to be doled out amongst over 150 clubs.
The AUCC constitution stipulates that the cap for clubs is 5 percent of the total budget, or about $5,000. Associations, however, have a cap of 10 percent of the total budget, or about $10,000. Only a few organizations qualify as associations, including the Latin American Student Association, Queers and Allies and the College Republicans.
The College Democrats are only classified as a club, but an executive decision was made at the beginning of the year - before the Democrats lost their spring semester funding - to avoid charges of bias and allocate both groups $3,500 for the year.
Additionally, clubs are required to raise an additional 10 percent of their budget in outside fundraising activities. Associations are required to raise 15 percent.
New clubs face challenges
Kramer said club members and leaders often complain about the equitability of funding allocations, but that this criticism is not warranted.
"People are always complaining, but there really is no way to compare two clubs. You need to look at [them on] an individual basis. We compare the leadership of this and last year," Kramer said.
Newer clubs often find the difficulties involved in putting together a detailed budget can harm their ability to earn a significant budget for the year. The AUCC carefully scrutinizes all budget requests, and the amount of funding an organization receives is often less that what it requests in its budget.
Even members on the council itself admit to this shortcoming. Josh Goodman, vice-chair of the AUCC, said while he felt this year the council had done a better job addressing people's needs than in previous years, first-year clubs still generally miss out on the most funding.
Many students and club members still call for some sort of reform of the organization. Mushnick, Johnson and Dombrowski all said greater awareness of the AUCC's proceedings would benefit the student body. Mushnick and Dombrowski also said that more funding overall was needed for the clubs.
"I think a lot of clubs are shortchanged. ... The amount a club contributes to the students of this campus needs to be taken into account," said Dombrowski, adding that he was satisfied with the funding that the AUFPA received. "I think part of the problem is that there is so little to go around. I think the administration needs to have more money available to clubs"
