Every semester the Michigan Student Assembly allocates a  portion of its budget to almost three hundred registered student groups through the Budget Priorities Committee. For students, this is the most noticeable effect of the $5.69 tacked onto their tuition bills each semester.

The funding process is open to any MSA-registered student group. The application is filled out with an itemized budget and an according column for how much is requested from the Assembly. In addition there are questions regarding what each student group does and whether or not they are planning any special events that might require more funding.

For the most part funding remains relatively constant from semester to semester because student group budgets do not change much. Despite this some group still request exorbitant amount of money. In fact fifty-one groups asked for $3,000 or more, twice that of the maximum allocation of $1,500 this semester. When asked why some groups ask for such large amounts, or why some applications request funding for non-funded items like travel or T-shirts, BPC Chair Siafa Hage commented that “They don’t read it [the application], honestly. Like the Code of Student Conduct, no one reads it until it affects you.” Whatever the reason for the large requests, nothing was particularly unexpected in terms of disbursement, and the average allocation this semester was just over $300.

 Along with the routine of fund allocation, the BPC usually gets its fair share of scorn with regard to how the money is divided up. After the initial recommendations are published, there is an appeal process where student groups can meet with the BPC and explain why they should be allocated more money. A limited budget makes it difficult to satisfy every group though. Complaints usually focus on how much one student group received compared to another, but simply looking at the numbers fails to consider all the factors involved in determining allocations.

“We consider the group’s impact on campus, their activities planned, communities served, and how much money they needed in order to pull off their event.” said Hage. In addition the issue of “viewpoint neutrality” comes into play, as mandated by the holding in the case of University of Wisconsin Board of Regents vs. Southworth. As a practiced matter, however, funding decisions are mostly determined by what each student group requests and whether their requests are considered reasonable. For instance, one could assume that groups like College Democrats and College Republicans should each receive equal funding for the student government to maintain a neutral political stance. That would only be the case if both opposing groups had similar budgets and requests. It happens to be true for the College Democrats and College Republicans, since they received $500 and $450 respectively. Students for Life only received $185 compared to the $400 given to Medical Students of Choice, but this seems reasonable considering that SFL only requested $260 versus the $1,415 that Medical Students of Choice asked for.

Viewpoint neutrality is even more difficult when the vast diversity of students groups is considered. For example, how can parity be achieved between the Midwestern Indian American Student Organization, Singapore Students Association, and Michigan Taiwanese Student Association? There are simply too many groups that could be regarded as counterparts, especially when the real issue at hand is whether or not the group is able to accomplish the goal of serving its members.

One wrinkle in the political aspect of the funding process stems from the large number of student groups. Academics for Affirmative Action and Social Justice, Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Mean Necessary, Law Students for Affirmative Action, and United for Equality & Affirmative Action all applied for funding, while VOICE was the only opposing student group to register.  As an aside, VOICE did not receive funding due to a lost application, and both primary contacts did not respond to email from the BPC informing them of this. So many groups on one side of an issue makes neutrality nearly impossible, but this is more of a problem with the Southworth ruling than the funding process.

It is easy to look at the results of the BPC fund allocations and assume political bias, but the BPC already has enough to do with determining funding.  Trying to advance one cause over another adds unnecessary complexity to the already tedious project of reviewing three hundred applications.
Furthermore, BPC took every precaution to avoid bias in the funding process. “If a member of the committee is involved in an organization, they are excluded from the funding process for all groups that they have ties or biases towards.” explained Hage.  In fact committee members with a conflict of interest were required to leave the room, so not even their presence would be a factor. The large amount of funding to liberal political student groups is mainly due to the fact that there are more liberal student groups than conservative ones.

This again suggests that the Southworth ruling is unrealistic because neutrality is both arbitrary and subjective. Certainly denying funding to one group or giving extra funding to another group in the interest of fairness cannot work because it compromises the purpose of funding process, which is to assist in the operation of student groups. In that sense, the BPC has once again succeeded in its job of distributing funds.