On Sat., Nov. 10, the Undergraduate Organization Funding Committee held the purse strings on another under-attended, overzealous and relatively unsuccessful campuswide event.
Cirque du Monde captured this semester’s theme, and while the idea impressed, the execution fell flat — an outdoor-in-November, pay-at-the-door festival that failed to attract one tenth (about 500 students including performers) of the undergraduate population. That’s the trend of these things. Not the problem.
The real trouble is that the cost of the event itself surpassed its original budget by almost 50 percent, and the UOFC barely even batted an eye. Is the UOFC acting responsibly by putting up red tape and underfunding campus organizations while at the same time bending the rules for an underwhelming event that relatively few students attended?
Part of the UOFC’s generous 5K competition — where coalitions of student groups receive $5,000 to organize an all-campus event — Cirque du Monde ran into unforeseen expenses, such as security and event staff, ultimately racking up a bill of about $7,000.
Having UOFC foot the bill for later events — the new policy in place — doesn’t fix the problem of this 5K program. It highlights the lack of vision that UOFC has for unifying the campus. Perhaps Cirque du Monde nominally brought together 10 organizations, but if the aim is to bring together all students, something is missing. Perhaps the tent was too small.
The 5K competition should be given serious reconsideration. The potentially $15,000-plus the UOFC will spend over the course of the year on their contests could be better put to use if parceled to individual organizations.