International Recognized Student Organizations are facing difficulties organizing their events because of the new funding rules of the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming (ASUW) and regulations of the Campus Activity Center (CAC).
This academic year, CAC implemented new rules on how student organizations at UW should be registered to become recognized and be able to organize events on campus.
ASUW cut the funding for all RSOs to $10,000, making it challenging for the international students’ organizations to organize their annual events and promote cultural diversity on campus.
“It affects international RSOs, because most of us have food catering from outside of the university, which are obviously much more expensive, than UW catering,” Haydee Chapeton, the President of International Students Association (ISA), said. “So, we need more money, especially, for us to promote culture.”
RSOs met changes in the process of the registration of the organization within CAC. This year the training for RSO went online and made it necessary for all committee members go through the set of lectures and pass a mandatory quiz to make a student association officially recognized and able to apply for funding.
“Every person should take the quiz made of ten questions and they have to get at least eight out of these questions correct,” Jennifer Kirk, the Assistant Director of CAC, said. “So, the reason for the change is that we just wanted to make it more accommodating and allow the students to do that on their own without putting a time pressure on them.”
The new training and registration system is meant to make the process more convenient and reduce pressure on RSOs, but there are some technical issues starting out.
“You cannot become an RSO if the modules are not passed and quizzes are not submitted by all the committee members,” Chapeton said. “As soon as the training is online, some technical issues with the website may occur. Some people don’t receive specific e-mails, for example. And, then we go to CAC office or talk to IT for them to fix the problem.”
MILAAP, Indian Students Organization at UW, also faced problems with the approval of one of their events, Diwali night.
“I don’t [know] whether CAC ever sent any e-mails, saying that the RSO is under probation,” the former president and recent advisory committee member of MILAAP, Karan Manhas, said. “We submitted our event and someone from CAC by mistake approved our event. When they learned about it, they moved it back to the status ‘not approved.’ When I went to their office and asked whether all paperwork is in line, we learned that we failed to renew our RSO, which is under probation. I was not aware of that.”
Another issue that was met by MILAAP during the organization of an event was the lack of communication between CAC’s previous committee members and recent committee members in regards to the mistakes that were done in previous years.
“We learned about some issues of the past with the event management that the Associated Students Technical Services (ASTEC) to CAC,” Manhas said. “It was a miscommunication between past committees, when they didn’t tell us what were the issues that ASTEC guys told them. So, we were not aware of it.”
There are different reasons for the inconveniences that appear in the daily life of an RSO. Changes in the registration process, budget cuts and annual changes in the committee board are among them.
“I think an issue with student organization communication comes in the form of when officers transition positions from one year to the next,” Kirk said, in an email. “At that point, it is the responsibility of outgoing student leadership (and in some cases the advisor depending on the groups expectation of them) to communicate any and all notes, emails, successes, failures, goals, passwords, documents and per UW 8-234, update their officer contact information with the CAC on UW Connect so that we know we are communicating with the correct officers, advisors and members.”
