The Associated Students of Fort Lewis College met on Wednesday to discuss whether or not grants from the Financial Allocation Board should be restricted to Registered Student Organizations that are level I.
Resolution 17-026 RSO Grant Eligibility was presented by senator and ASFLC presidential candidate Dustin Fink.
Currently, the FAB bylaws state that grant money is intended to be used for RSO Is in the case of event grants, Fink said.
When an RSO II applies for a grant, the RSO must list what changes they have made to their budget in order to justify why they need a grant, he said.
“If an RSO II wants to host an event or they want to travel, it should be accounted for in their line item budget,” he said.
The ASFLC and the FAB cannot account for unexpected circumstances that an RSO may face during the year that may require them to apply for a grant, vice president of the ASFLC Mason Shea said.
“I am kind of in favor of leaving it as is,” he said.
FAB has the ability to deny an event or travel grant on the basis that an RSO cannot justify asking for the money, senator and ASFLC vice presidential candidate Ian Fullinwider said.
“I don’t see the need to legislatively restrict an RSO II’s ability to seek additional funding,” he said.
RSO IIs do not have the paid staff members that the Environmental Center and KDUR have, he said.
RSO II status comes as a privilege and it is a privilege to have access to a 130,000 dollar pool that the RSO IIs can pull from, president of the ASFLC Connor Cafferty said.
“If you are demonstrating a need at one time and your circumstances change year to year, that may be a sign that your organization is not as stable as an RSO II should be,” he said.
FAB director Lauren Smith stated that she was also in favor of restricting event and travel grants to RSO Is.
“As a member of FAB, I see this as micromanaging FAB,” Fullinwider said.
If the ASFLC cannot entrust the FAB to determine that an RSO II can’t justify additional grants on top of their budget, then it needs to invest in training FAB members, he said.
“The overall theme that I’ve gotten from the table tonight is this narrowing and narrowing and narrowing way for RSOs to gather money,” senator Evan Wick said.
Restricting RSOs avenues for funding from the ASFLC is not the message that the ASFLC should support with the amount of money that the campus could be getting within the next few years, he said.
Resolution 17-026 was voted down with ten votes and one abstention vote from senator Cliff Field.