The decision to eliminate funding for the Multicultural Student Center Funding Board was not a bad one.
The 6-5 vote from the Activity & Service Fee Budget Committee is a budgetary decision so deserving student organizations can receive money with as little red tape as possible.
The MSC is an important part of UCF and deserves significant funding, but it does not need its own board to dispense funds to students.
Eliminating it will only make students’ lives easier. Currently, student organizations that are holding a culturally themed event must go through the MSC Funding Board to secure funding. Eliminating that board’s funding will knock out the extra steps students must take to secure financial backing.
On-campus events that are not culturally themed secure funding through the Financial Allocations for Organizations Committee. If the decision is approved by the SGA Senate on April 1, all students would work with the FAO Committee.
Forcing students to go through the MSC Funding Board instead of the FAO Committee means unnecessary work for cultural clubs. They should be able to secure funding in the least time-consuming manner.
Although the MSC Funding Board has not been established for more than a year, it probably should not have been made in the first place. When doing so, the SGA put people in charge of determining if an event fit their definition of cultural in order to receive funds.
Cultural means different things to different people, though. It is an abstract idea that can’t be defined the same way by every person.
If the MSC Funding Board’s definition of cultural doesn’t match the organization’s, students could be sent back and forth between the different boards when trying to secure event funds.
The MSC is important because of its objectives, including fostering diversity.
Diversity is defined as the state or fact of being diverse, different or unlike. The whole point of cultivating diversity is to promote different aspects of life, which can’t be done if UCF is requiring students to meet the same requirements.
Eliminating the MSC Funding Board won’t squash UCF’s diversity but instead, the decision will probably increase the number of activities on campus since it will be easier for students to plan and execute events.
We hope that on April 1, the SGA Senate agrees with the decision that ASF committee members made to eliminate the MSC Funding Board.
The creation of the board came from good intentions but ultimately made a roadblock to diversity at UCF.
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