[media-credit name=”Dev Soni” align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]The Student Government Association (SGA) released its semesterly special appeals report.

The report details the student-run organizations that requested money for their respective clubs through SGA and the amounts that were approved.

This semester 31 organizations applied for SGA’s special appeals. Of the 31 clubs that applied, 12 received the entire dollar amount that was requested, seven received partial amounts and 12 were not approved for any amount.

Through this special appeals process this year, $23,677.04 was requested from organizations, but SGA was only able to approve $9,326.20.

With the recent cuts to SGA’s budget, the allocation of money to organizations is less than it has been in past semesters.

During the 2016-2017 academic year SGA received a $150,000 cut to their $750,000 budget. This is the first year that SGA is working with the decreased budget, according to SGA Vice President for Finance Ryan Hicks.

“We budget all $600,000 and every organization has a date that they have to complete their event by. If you don’t complete your event by that date we pull that money back,” Hicks said. “This is our third special appeal. All of that money has come from orgs that have not spent the money that they were supposed to, we pull it back and we immediately re-allocate it to every other org.”

Junior nursing major and President of the Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA), Meaghan Rocha applied for funding for an event called “A Conversation with Schulyer Bailar,” which will be taking place on April 7 from 4-6 p.m. in the Mount Carmel Auditorium.

“We submitted a form on DoYouQU and got a meeting with the financial representatives from SGA,” Rocha said. “At the meeting, we explained the event and the monetary breakdown, and we received feedback on what we might be receiving.”

GSA was not approved for their entire requested amount, but was granted the amount they needed to fund the event.

SGA tries to focus on how to allocate the money in a way that will positively impact the most students at Quinnipiac, according to Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Matthew Kurz.

“SGA receives a certain amount of money as a budget each year and part of that money they use for their SGA budget,” Kurz said. ”In years past I think it was larger, but this year it’s a significantly less budget for (SGA’s) actual organization because they wanted a majority of the money that they received to go to student groups essentially.”

Rocha has not taken part in any of SGA special appeals in the past while being president of GSA, but thinks that the process is effective the way it is.

Most clubs are not funded simply because the money that was available for the special appeals process was allocated to other organizations already. Other clubs weren’t funded because there were aspects that did not fall in line with SGA’s policy, according to Hicks.

The order in which SGA hears the appeals is dictated in their policy.  On-campus events are heard first, followed by off-campus events, conferences, competitions, capital expenditures.

“Within each one of those is just whoever submits it the fastest,” Hicks said. “So we separate them all into piles of the five categories and then one could be submitted at 8:15 a.m. Monday morning, that one is going to go before one that is submitted Tuesday at noon. So it’s first come first serve within those categories.”

The goal is to spend all $600,000 of the budget so that next year SGA can show the need for more money for different things, according to Hicks.

“Our goal is just benefit as many students as possible, benefit as many orgs as possible and that’s just through constantly auditing and re-allocating the funds as much as we can,” Hicks said.