Funding is down in all areas at the University and the Student Budget Committee has not been excluded from losing funding and cutting student organizations’ funding for the 2009-2010 school year. There are over 300 student organizations registered with the Office of Campus Activities, and of that, about 186 applied for funding for the 2009-2010 school year, said Philip Wolf, Student Budget Committee co-chair. ‘ The SBC is a recommending body of 11 students which allocates funds based on the amount of money the administration has decided to allocate to all student organizations. The funds used for student organization funding are from a percentage of the general fee students pay, Wolf said. ‘We are given a set number of funds which we can allocate at the beginning of the year,’ Wolf said. This year the SBC received funding requests totaling about $1.2 million, but only has $400,000 in funds to allocate for the next school year, Wolf said. ‘ ‘Our goal was to be as transparent and fair as possible,’ Wolf said. The organizations that saw the most significant cuts in funding for the next year and will see an even larger cut for the following year, are the organizations associated with the musical arts. There are about 13 musical student organizations that will receive partial funding for next year and nothing for the 2010 to 2011 school year, Wolf said. These music student organizations are losing funding because they are associated with an academic class. The SBC policy states that student organizations associated with a class shall not receive funding from the SBC because the college the class is associated with is supposed to be responsible for the funding. However, this policy has not been significantly enforced until this year’s budget hearings, Wolf said. ‘We had to reevaluate the situation due to the budget cuts affecting the SBC funds and the University,’ he said. ‘We decided it is a conflict of interest and we can no longer [provide funding]. It is up to the musical arts to do it in the future.’ One music student organization that has had its funding significantly decreased because of its association with academics is the HeeBeeBGs. The HeeBeeBGs is a small a cappella chamber ensemble of the University’s Men’s Chorus that is associated with a one credit hour vocal lab. A music education major is required to complete at least six credit hours of large ensemble music labs. The funding the HeeBeeBGs has received in the past from the SBC has been put towards helping the group grow and touring expenses, HeeBeeBG’s President Eric Watts said. ‘For them to not even give us a chance to apply for funding next year is what really surprised me,’ he said. Even though their funding is supposed to be cut for this coming school year the HeeBeeBGs received more than in the past, Watts said. He also said they currently have a budget of about $1,800 and plan to apply for spot funding. In order to receive spot funding, the registered student organization may submit a request that does not exceed $1,000 to earn additional funding that was not anticipated during the annual funding hearing. These hearings occur periodically throughout the academic year and funding is granted to organizations that complete the requirements, according to the SBC Funding Web site. Other student organizations have lost funding because of their score. Each year student organizations that apply for funding are given a score based on their contracts, budget hearing attendance and monthly budget meetings with an advisor from the previous year. If an organization has not fully met these requirements they are subject to lose a certain percentage of their funding after their annual budget has been decided upon, Wolf said. ‘This score does not affect the initial amount of their annual funding,’ Wolf said. ‘Only after the initial funding has been granted will the score bring down their funding.’ One organization that lost funding because of this was the Environmental Action Group, according to Laura Winebarger, the group’s president. To learn more on the SBC’s policies and allocation of funds, visit their Web site at www.bgsu.edu/downloads/sa/file23499.pdf.