The Associated Students Finance Board distributed the last of its Fall Quarter unallocated budget during last night’s three-hour meeting, allotting $14,732 to 16 student organizations.
The board partially funded the Model United Nations, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Education Abroad Program, men’s club soccer, India Association, Ravaani, Mock Trial Team, Improvability, Kappa Alpha Theta, Gamma Zeta Alpha, Pan-African Student Union, Hermanos Unidos, La Escuelita, Black Quare, Sigma Chi Omega and Muslim Student Association.
Model UN returned to the board for a second time this month to request funding for its annual trip to the global Model UN conference, held this year in Buenos Aires, Argentina. While the organization asked for $3,500 last week, the group realized they had miscalculated the cost of the trip and asked for an additional $1,500 to cover the remaining costs.
Model UN Deputy Secretary General Alex Hammer-Barulich, a fourth-year geography major, said the group is generally self-sustaining and its members have already shown dedication to the excursion’s success.
“Our members are paying from their pockets as well and this is really the only event we ask funding for. It’s our biggest event,” Hammer-Barulich said. “We’ve already set rates for the trip and we don’t want to have to change them.”
Board member Nathan Walter encouraged the council to consider the fiscal impact of allocating $5,000 to one group while on a tight budget. However, board member April Gubatina said the board has a responsibility to distribute allocations equally and rarely gets the chance to fund scholastic endeavors.
“[Model UN members] do spend a lot of money out of their pocket and I think we should help them out since we don’t get a lot of requests from academic teams,” Gubatina said.
After Vice Chair Jason Lopez reminded the board that budgetary discussions need to consider the event itself rather than members’ ability to pay for events personally, the board allocated $3,500 from the Fall Quarter budget and an additional $250 from the Winter Quarter budget.
Ravaani, a South Asian a capella group formed last January, requested $1,749.10 to attend Anahat, a national South Asian a capella competition at UC Berkeley. Ravaani Treasurer Hari Sivakumar, an electrical and computer engineering graduate student, said the club has a strong foundation despite its recent establishment.
“We are a new club and already made top eight to perform in the competition,” Sivakumar said. “This is a big competition — we would be performing in front of about 800 people and representing UCSB. We’re new so we didn’t think we’d make it, but we did and we don’t have any funding yet.”
The board eventually decided to allocate $256 for the event as the club is comprised of few undergraduate students.
