On Feb. 5, SGA passed a bill limiting club funding to $20,000 across all clubs and organizations on campus and discussed adapting ROAR Days due to new federal nondiscrimination rules.
ROAR Days are week-long events hosted by Student Life that features free events, entertainment, and has focused on multiculturalism and student club engagement in the past few years.
It is an event that caters towards the multicultural student body, which helps underrepresented minorities on campus by encouraging engagement with multicultural clubs. Thus, this event allots the monetary resources to the eligible multicultural clubs.
Federal transitions
According to Amanda Allee, assistant vice chancellor student support and engagement, ROAR Days funding must be open to all clubs, in accordance with the memo released by Attorney General Pam Bondi in July 2025, which prohibits granting preferential treatment based on protected characteristics.
“As we go through the Federal Transitions, we have to think a little bit differently about how we fund due to recent changes. The university has always had a non-discrimination statement to protect students, but now we have to remove anything giving preferential treatment to protected groups as well. We can no longer limit ROAR Days to just the multicultural clubs,” Allee said.
According to Allee, clubs will be chosen by a committee of two senators, a MOSAIC employee, representatives from Student Life, and MOSAIC director Whitley Hadley will chair. Student Life has created a rubric for guidelines on how clubs will be chosen, and funding will be decided by SGA.
Funding cap
The Director of Finance Josh Mattias presented a bill to make changes to the funding guidelines for ROAR Days. The purpose of this bill is to reduce or prevent “double-dipping,” which is club funding requests from ROAR Days funding and budget advisory committee (BAC) funding for the same event. The bill also removes the cap for individual clubs so BAC can distribute the total $20,000 as they see fit.
According to previous scribe reporting, clarifications were made to the existing guidelines regarding funding categories, but current guidelines do not explicitly forbid the “double-dipping” practice.
“The way the Funding Guidelines are currently written is that there is nothing stopping clubs from double dipping for ROAR Days events. So, clubs can submit proposals for ROAR Days funding and for normal BAC funding for the same event,” Director of Finance Josh Mattias said.
According to Director of Student Engagement Noelle San Souci, the allocation of ROAR Days funds has changed throughout the years. Removing the cap would allow BAC to access the entire $20,000 fund to split amongst the clubs as needed, rather than each club getting up to $2,000 evenly.
The bill was passed and ROAR Days will continue to receive its own separate funding, with exact allocations determined by BAC.
In other news
- A bill to increase the senate budget by $20,000 by taking funds from the CarryForward Fund was passed in a unanimous vote. Any funds that are not used will be returned to reserves.
- The Winter Formal will be held at the Ent Center on Feb. 27.
Graphic via The Scribe Archives.