Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) approved changes to the Student Activities Funding Committee (SAFC)'s funding guidelines and discussed campus involvement with the Entertainment Board (E-Board) at its Wednesday night meeting.
The SAFC proposal detailed a host of revisions to the guidelines, including reducing funding for hotel lodging, conferences and vehicle reimbursement for clubs or organizations.
"The book as it was written before didn't accurately reflect our decision-making process," said BSG Treasurer Kyle Dempsey '11.
The SAFC Blue and Yellow books will be renamed the "SAFC General Club Funding Guidelines" and the "SAFC Sports Funding Guidelines," respectively.
Hotel funding was cut by $5 per person from $25 to $20, with the same expectation of four people rooming together.
"Any city that people have requested to go to, every single time I found hotels, without exception, under $80 per person on kayak.com," said Dempsey.
Additionally, the proposal specifies, "we will not fund expert instructors if their per hour cost is unreasonable."
Dempsey said that earlier this year, Masque & Gown asked SAFC to fund a clown for a three-hour workshop for the improvability students at a cost of $500 per hour. SAFC did not entirely fund the clown, giving $150 per hour.
"There was confusion and a lot of hard feelings, so we added a clause about unrealistic and extreme costs," said Dempsey.
The proposal also lists that the SAFC will not fund a club's events if there are too many things going on in the same weekend.
"Rather than have too many things going on, students not being able to enjoy too many activities, we reserve the right to say there is too much going on already," said Dempsey.
In favor of the proposal, President Mike Dooley '10 said, "With the elimination of some repeat entries and confusing vocabulary, I think clubs across campus will be able to function much more efficiently."
Conversation turned to the E-Board during the Public Comment portion of the meeting. Class of 2010 Representative Rutledge Long brought up the effort to involve more of the campus with E-Board's decision-making process.
"The E-Board is in charge of bringing most major musical and performing arts groups to campus, such as Ivies and winter concerts," said E-Board Representative Chris Omachi '12.
According to Long, because the E-Board controls a large amount of money, more students than the 14 members should have a say in how it's spent. According to Dempsey, the E-Board has $143,000 for the 2009-2010 academic year.
"It seems most fair that the student body should democratically select the acts that come to campus but I know that the concern lies in the fact that it's not always possible to bring the bands the students want," said Long.
"My solution would be to drastically reduce the amount of money that the E-Board is given," said Long. "In my opinion, $30,000 is way too much to pay any pop artist."
Long argued that if the E-Board wishes to "represent the campus" it seems that more members on the board would be essential.
"It would be better if all three members from the class council would have a vote but ideally the entire campus would have a say," he said.
Polls are one way to involve the student body. However, according to Omachi, "it seems to me that polls in the past caused the students to be angry with the E-Board" when their top choice band could not be brought in.
Cautious of time, Dooley said, "we'll talk again at the end meting again, stay after if you're interested." Because this was not a formal proposal for discussion or voting, there was no motion to extend the discussion.
During the after-meeting, "all we did was prepare for another discussion outside the meeting time, to gather information and prepare a thoughtful conversation during the next meeting," wrote Vice President Anirudh Sreekrishnan '12 in an e-mail to the Orient.
"Often times it is much more effective and efficient to start the discussion about certain things in a smaller group before you bring it forward to the entire body, where things stand a greater chance of getting bogged down," Dooley wrote in an e-mail to the Orient.
"We just further discussed the E-Board off the record because it wasn't really the right forum to be bringing it up during BSG because it was not under a proposal," said Omachi in an e-mail to the Orient.
BSG officially passed the Election Rule Amendments Regarding Petitions proposal, as discussed at the last meeting, and took a first vote on the Election Rule Amendments Regarding Resources proposal.
Discussions occasionally became rowdy throughout the meeting. Dooley consistently reminded the group: "This is not BSG Gone Wild."
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