In a two-hour meeting, Student Federation decided whether to grant $7,000 to College Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom to take students to the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Student Fed’s final decision was to grant $6,000 for the trip, $1,000 less than the $7,000 requested.
One hundred and twenty-six students from Hillsdale will be in attendance. In previous years, Student Fed has funded a small portion of the trip (usually somewhere under $2,000), but this year funding from the state fell through, prompting College Republicans and YAF to ask for over three times the amount previously asked for.
According to Student Fed records, the $7,000 requested for one trip is more than the money that every club combined on campus asked for last semester. This amount makes up more than 10 percent of the discretionary budget for this year.
The debate primarily centered on how much to give for CPAC.
“We were a little hesitant about spending that amount for that kind of event. So, what we were looking for was a little bit more of a compromise, a little bit more of a give and take, to see a vested interest on the part of students who might be willing to put a little bit more in as well as a willingness to work from YAF and College Republicans, that there might have been a little bit more of a compromise,” Graduate Student Representative Zachary Reynolds said.
One of the suggestions was that the price of the trip be raised by $10, giving the groups an additional $1,260 to work with. Other suggestions included dipping into College Republicans’ bank account to gain more funds.
“I would have proposed that they raise the price of going to CPAC by a little bit, and as a result they could have raised more money to pay for the busses,” sophomore Delta Tau Delta Representative Paul Mittermeier said. “But to lower the price that much, and to have that many people sign up, and then to come expecting a bailout from Student Federation, expecting that we’re just going to give that much money. I believe that one of the representatives estimated that it was around 10 percent of the discretionary budget, which is a little unreasonable.”
There were also arguments for funding the full amount. Some representatives suggested that because of the advantage offered by CPAC, the groups should receive $7,000.
“I’m not going to say that we’re taking more students or that we have more students involved than in any other activity because I don’t think that’s the case,” College Republicans President and Independent Representative Sam Holdeman said. “I believe there were a couple of dances, for example. I would however, suggest, in response to that that we are providing students with a wonderful opportunity for career advancement (the conference). We’re providing transportation to D.C. We also have two nights in D.C. which added on to the cost of transportation is extremely expensive. And there’s conference registration.”
The debate went back and forth for a while before junior Representative Ryan Jelalian suggested funding $4,800 of the trip. The Federation accepted the motion and went to vote.
However, before they voted, an amendment was added to change the amount to $6,000.
The final amount approved for the CPAC trip was $6,000.
“Obviously, I was hoping for the full proposal amount, but we are still in talks with some other donors, so I think it will work out,” Holdeman said. “We’ll make it work out. College Republicans still has some money of our own outside the CPAC budget that we will be digging into now to make sure it works. It will happen. CPAC is going on. We would have appreciated full funding, but we are appreciative of everything Student Federation has given us, just to clarify here, but we’ll take what we can get and be very happy with it.”
Some representatives thought the final amount approved was still too much.
“I disapproved of the funding,” Mittermeier said. “I thought that we should have knocked one or two thousand more off. I believe that $4,000 would have been the more acceptable ballpark, and I did support Representative Ryan Jelalian’s orginal proposal [$4,800]. I would have accepted that proposal, but I think that $6,000 is far too high, and that it is akin to just a slap on the wrist for the irresponsible way in which College Republicans and YAF handled their initial fundraising. So, I certainly was not a proponent of the final outcome, and I thought that we could have done well to eliminate a few more thousand from that.”
Overall, there was much dissension over the decision to spend this much money.
“I thought it was a great discussion, and I was very impressed with the contributions that a variety of representatives made,” junior President Marie Wathen said. “There was a real diversity of opinions and questions, which was excellent.”
