Student Assembly

The Appropriations Committee felt that while CU Tonight was providing an excellent service the Cornell community, particularly in incentivizing a much needed incrase in student-organized late night programming, there were a number of operational changes it could undergo to improve its efficiency.

Committee members felt that it would be very beneficial for CU Tonight to incorporate a system of partial funding into its current allocation process, as opposed to its current system of only providing all-or-nothing funding.

The committee felt very strongly that CU Tonight should more specifically define their criteria for events that merited funding. Specific areas that the committee recommends that CU Tonight address are the efficiency of spending, the variety of students that the event would appeal to, similar programming already being held, alternative funding options the group has sought, and past performance of events funded by CU Tonight.

In an attempt to cut down on the surplus, much of which was deemed to be caused by unspent allocations, the committee also recommended that CU Tonight develop some sort of procedure for keeping organizations accountable for requested funds and for this to be reflected either in the current year or future allocations. Members of the committee also suggested that CU Tonight also develop a standard and verifiable process for groups to report attendance figures (eg. ID scanners, checking net ids, etc).

Members of the committee also felt that CU Tonight could better utilize its funding guidelines to incentivize certain desired actions on campus. One example was that the group could do more to promote collaboration across campus organizations by offering a small additional funding amount for events that have multiple sponsors that are equally contributing to the event. While the committee saw the value in capping funding on a single vent to spread funds across more events, it felt that a small increase would mitigate these effects. Committee members also thought that caps could be increased for events that are held during the first six weeks of each semester, where there is currently a higher demand for late night events. Some committee members also felt that extremely successful events that reached very large populations of students could receive additional funding (possibly through the co-sponsorship grant).

Overall, the committee felt that CU Tonight fills an invaluable void on campus, but that in order to improve its efficiency it had a number of operational changes it could explore.

Respectfully submitted,

Roneal Desai ‘13
Vice President for Finance
Student Assembly