Student Council's executive board announced Tuesday it placed $20,000 of its own funds into the appropriations process.
The money is part of the $24,000 Council received this year through an ongoing agreement between Council and the Student Activities Committee, which stipulates Council receive 15 percent of unclaimed money in the Student Activities Fund every year.
With this increase, Council appropriated over $600,000 this spring.
"We felt that since it is student activities funds intended for student organizations, it was important to reallocate the funds to different organizations in order to help them realize their goals," Council President Daisy Lundy said.
Vice President of Organizations Eli Dejarnette, a member of the executive board, said he was satisfied with the decision.
"Because we had such success with fundraising, we did not really need the money," he said. "We thought it would be best to give it back to CIOs, especially because they are hurting so much."
Lundy said she hopes the money will help student organizations follow through with planned events and activities.
"While looking at the larger picture, $20,000 does not seem that significant," Lundy said. "But for many smaller CIOs, this money will allow programming that may not have otherwise been possible."
Dejarnette said the money will help CIOs financially.
"Every dollar makes a difference when you are dealing with 300-plus organizations," he said. "That is where the money belongs."
Vice President for Administration Will Sowers did not vote in favor of putting the money into spring appropriations.
"While I support the executive board's final decision, I felt as a whole the money could be put to better use like capital projects that could benefit multiple CIOs or allocated to appeals or fall appropriations," he said. "Fall appropriations was underfunded last year, and it could happen again next year."
Sowers added that the $4,000 not put into spring appropriations will be discretionary funding that will be used for smaller capital projects or to assist the new administration during the transition months.
According to Sowers, the discretionary funds will help because Council was out of money when the current administration went into office.
College Rep. Tom Gibson said he was glad the money was going back into the community, but he expressed concern about how the decision was made.
"I would like to see more effort by exec this coming year to ask the representative body their opinions in making such important decisions that affect thousands and thousands of dollars," he said. "If we had gotten a chance to talk about it, the money may have been more efficiently used. When you have a group of 31 people, there are going to be ideas that come out of that, and one of those ideas may have been a more efficient alternative."
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