Black Media Arts Collective, the Pre-Law Society and the Society of Women Engineers all have one thing in common when it comes to funding.
They are not receiving any from the Temple Student Government.
Instead, they are three of 91 student organizations that failed to re-register for TSG allocations by the Sept. 28 deadline. Groups that did not register by the deadline will have to wait until the spring semester to re-register.
TSG provides $3,000 a year to student organizations that apply for allocations. In return, the approved student organizations must send a representative to each TSG general assembly meeting.
Student Activities Program Coordinator Arnold Boyd, who gives a report at the weekly TSG meetings, said that the majority of groups that do not re-register usually “lack a transitional plan.”
“They don’t know when to reregister, they don’t have their own deadlines and they assume that an individual has completed their obligation of reregistering for the group,” Boyd said. “Almost half of the organizations do not check their mailboxes and miss out deadlines [and other information].”
The 2005-2006 allocations process underwent a series of revisions after TSG was unable to provide all student organizations all the money they requested last year.
TSG could not produce the money for many reasons, such as insufficient funds, a growing number of student organizations, and several group representatives failing to follow TSG guidelines.
This year TSG’s budget has grown to $170,000, up from $112,000 last year. The budget is primarily funded through the General Activities Fund. TSG is also introducing a mandatory allocations advising session for all group representatives and stiffer penalties for representatives who do not attend meetings.
Since a majority of the allocations money comes directly from GAF, all programs must be advertised and open to the public this year.
The revisions have been a hot topic at general assembly meetings and several groups that are not receiving allocations this year have claimed that they were misinformed about the process.
Boyd said that one reason why groups failed to re-register for allocations is because they may “[no longer] want to be affiliated with Temple.”
He also said that some organizations lose interest and do not want to deal with the paperwork or the people, while other groups choose to no longer exist altogether.
“There is about a 15 percent drop-off in student groups each year,” Boyd said. “But there have been a higher percentage of new groups outweighing what dropped off in the previous two years.”
As of Sept. 30, 115 of the 180-plus student organizations had completed the allocations process, Boyd said. He expects the number of student organizations to pass 200 by spring 2006.
Tyson McCloud can be reached at Tyson@temple.edu.
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