Five days ago, Erin Fackler ’11 sent e-mails to friends and acquaintances requesting the 100 signatures required to be considered a candidate for chair of the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee. The catch: She is currently in China, studying abroad at Peking University.
“My time here has been amazing because it has allowed me to realize what is really important to me back at Yale,” Fackler said in an e-mail from Beijing. “One of these things is the UOFC.”
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Fackler said she wants to use her organizational skills and experience on the UOFC — gained during her first-semester stint as UOFC’s director of capital equipment — to make the funding process more efficient for student groups.
Lauren Noble ’11, who worked with Fackler on a UOFC application, commended Fackler for her understanding of the “often hard-to-navigate UOFC bureaucracy” and her commitment to reforming the organization.
Fackler said her intimate knowledge of the funding process — which she said she helped design along with UOFC Chair Bryan Twarek ’10 — makes her better qualified to serve as chair than her competitor, Murong Yang ’12. (Yang has served as a UOFC officer and director of capital equipment second semester.)
In a Skype conversation early Thursday morning, Fackler said she has noticed several problems with how the UOFC functions. In an attempt to eliminate common mistakes on applications, the UOFC must become an accessible source of information for students, Fackler said. Student groups should know what banks are “group-friendly” and avoid unnecessary bureaucracy.
“I want to create a list of most of the expected costs for planning large events, such as dining hall rental costs or the cost of a security guard,” Fackler said. “I also think people should be aware of Yale requirements for events, such as clean-up costs.”
Fackler said she wants to give students more time to plan UOFC-funded $5,000 events because she has found that students have difficulty planning a campuswide event in a month or less.
Along with her involvement in each step of the UOFC funding process, Fackler is an active member of the Yale Political Union, where she served as treasurer of the Conservative Party. This past year, she worked at the Yale Conference and Event Services and the British Art Gallery library.