The Student Government has created a “Leadership Opportunity Fund” to help ease the financial burden of students running for SG president, vice president, secretary or comptroller. Applicants will have access to as much as $200, the Board of Election’s spending cap for election campaigns, SG Board of Elections Chairman Phil Cardarella said.
The ultimate idea is to see student elections become more accessible to students, SG President Time McBride said.
“In terms of running campaigns, having to dole out $200 of your own funds serves as a disincentive for some students to run because they can’t afford that,” McBride said.
The spending cap was lowered from $300 to $200 this year.
In order to apply for funding from the Leadership Opportunity Fund, candidates must be in contested races for positions on the executive board. They will also have to obtain a specific number of signatures on their nomination form, roughly estimated at 100 to 150, compared to the 75 student signatures necessary to be officially put on the ballot as a candidate, McBride said.
SG hopes to get a more economically diverse group of students to run for executive board positions by dedicating between $2,000 and $3,000 total to help cover campaign costs, McBride said.
“This endowment is meant to level the playing field and allow students from all socioeconomic backgrounds access to student leadership positions,” according to a news release from SG Communications Director Chris Jasinski.
Access to the Leadership Opportunity Fund will not be based on personal or family wealth. Asking candidates to disclose financial information would be an invasion of privacy, McBride said.
“We wanted to protect the privacy of lower-income students,” McBride said.
The money will be contributed jointly from Student Activities and the Office of Campus Life, and will eventually be included in SG’s budget.
Student Activities will distribute this year’s campaign subsidy so as not to add more funds to the SG budget finalized last April, said Andrew Toczydlowski, the Student Activities coordinator of governance and leadership.
Next year, the subsidy funds will come from the SG budget, which is made of undergraduate students’ Student Activities fees.
Steps will be put in place shortly to ensure that any money given to candidates from the fund will be used honestly, Toczydlowski said.
“As long as purchases don’t violate Board of Elections, Student Activities and University standards, they’re fine,” he said.
McBride hopes to extend this funding to students running for fall Senate elections as early as fall 2012, he said.
