Freshman Board angry over funding

The Freshman Class Board received significantly less money than the other Class Boards this year, according to College freshman Melissa Fien, the class treasurer. And now, the class is running out of money. Freshmen Class Board members said the freshmen got less money than other Class Boards because of mistakes and poor financing by last year's freshman class. The current freshman class received only $701.60 from the Undergraduate Assembly for this year, Fien said. UA Treasurer Sabrina Gottlieb, a College sophomore, confirmed that the other classes got significantly more money than the freshmen. The sophomores received $7,358, the juniors were allocated a total of $5,356.90 and the senior class was budgeted $7,476.23, in addition to a loan of $44,512, according to Gottlieb. Freshman class officers said they resented that this year's class was punished financially because of last year's mistakes -- especially because the current sophomores were budgeted ten times as much as this year's freshmen. "Instead of punishing the sophomore class, [the UA] punished the freshmen this year and gave us less money," Fien said. Freshman Class Vice-President for Corporate Sponsorship Ryan Anderson, a Wharton freshman, said the UA gave the freshmen less money than the other classes because last year's Freshman Class Board spent much more than their budgeted amount. Due to the lack of money, the freshmen are very close to running out of funds for the activities they have planned for the rest of the year, Lasher said. UA Chairperson and Wharton junior Dan Debicella said the UA did cut funding to this year's freshmen because of last year's deficit spending. "The freshmen last year, in the budget they presented, didn't have anything they wanted to do," Debicella said. "They couldn't justify any of [their funding requests]. So the UA cut it down to what they needed to do the program they wanted to do, which was $700." Debicella admitted that this year's Freshman Class Board had nothing to do with last year's mistakes, but he added that the budgetary process requires the UA to fund Class Boards based on past accomplishments. "The only thing the UA can go on is the past results of how the Class Boards have performed in the past," he said. "We're still trying to find our stride as far as funding." This funding disparity is the third revelation to rock the freshman Class Board in the past two weeks. Two weeks ago, then-President Dave Forlander, a College freshman, resigned, according to the new Freshman Class President, Engineering and Wharton freshman Brett Lasher. Lasher had been the freshman class vice-president. Lasher announced on Monday night that he would be taking over the presidency of the freshman class. Then, at a Class Board meeting yesterday afternoon, College freshman Josh Rockoff, the public relations officer, resigned from his post. At that meeting, several members of the Freshman Class Board commented on the relative lack of funding the class received from the UA.

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