An appeal to the Allocations Commitee

Dear Allocations Chair,

We are writing to you on behalf of PSU Poets and Writers, the student organization on campus that produces the art and literary magazine, Centrip- etal. Please consider this our official appeal to our allocated funds for fiscal year 2012. In the past, we have heard of several instances in which student organizations intentionally inflate their budgets, knowing that their budgets could or will be dramatically slashed by the allocations committee to figures much lower than what the organization can sufficiently operate on. Inflating budgets in order to receive adequate funds is NOT uncommon, and has even been advised by many of our fellow student org leaders among others. After the initial allocations meeting, how- ever, we were left with the assumption that this year was going to be differ- ent; and thus, we decided to trust that our financial needs to run Poets and Writers and publish Centripetal would be met by the allocations committee. Both in foresight and in hindsight, we believe Poets and Writers took a risk by presenting at the allocations hearing -- for lack of a better term -- a no-bullshit budget.

To be completely honest, we are sincerely disappointed with the result of our allocations request and have lost faith in the ethical decisions made by the allocations committee. We feel our trust in the committee has been betrayed, particularly since the com-

mittee asked for budgetary honesty, received it from us, and then allotted us inadequate funds anyway. As Co- Presidents, we find it frustrating that after employing this honesty in the monetary needs of our organization, we ultimately received about 7% less than what is necessary for general operations.

We had also allocated at our hear- ing to send four of our members to a conference for the first time in our organization's history, specifically to the National Poetry Slam (NPS) to be held in Boston, Massachusetts this August. This competition is held annu- ally and is in a different location each year, last year in St. Paul, Minnesota. It has been nine years since it has been in Boston, and thus, this is our best and most fiscally wise opportunity to attend. When this conference is accounted for in our budget allocated by the committee for 2011-2012, it just so happens that we were docked about 30% of our initial no-BS budget request, and thus completely denied funding for this unique opportunity. CEA funding was suggested at our hearing, but funding of this sort would not be available until September due to the fact that NPS is held in August. Thus, we would be unable to request this funding until after the conference, which is an unrealistic and risky proposi- tion since for one, CEA is not guaranteed; secondly, paying for this conference without requested funds would cut into

next year's budget, specifically into funds pertinent to Centripetal publish- ing costs; and finally, we cannot afford to front the money for the entirety of this conference on our own.

Following up, we were also told by the committee that we need to gener- ate more revenue. This suggestion has been taken to heart; however, running the organization with 8 active members (4 being the officers) alone, at the level of involvement on campus we have put ourselves at, is time consuming enough, never-mind raising money for basic operations, on top of fund raising for our first ever conference. We are left with a mind set of "we will try our absolute hardest to do the best that we can." Poets and Writers hopes through its appeal to the allocations committee to at least be granted the 7% increase in funds needed to operate as well as half, or even pinch for just a quarter, of the amount needed for the conference. We believe it is an unrealistic goal to fund raise $4,000 when we are still learning how to run the basics of this organization, since our transition from members to leaders were not ideal, and we are doing the best we can with what we were given.

Sincerely,

Kristen Russell & Haley Sciola Co-Presidents of Poets and Writers Co-Editors of Centripetal