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The Legislative Body (LB) approved the Financial Affairs Commission’s (FAC) proposed Spring 2006 operating budget, in the amount of $77,000, on Tuesday after the FAC cut over $100,000 from student groups’ requests. MCSG officials expect a substantial amount of unspent funds budgeted this fall to become available to student organizations in the spring for additional allocations. In a break from the past, LB members approved one change to the FAC’s proposed budget, striking $500 earmarked for the new “Take Your Professor to Lunch” program, which, every Monday, provides free lunch to professors students invite to Caf Mac. Much of the program’s original funding has gone unspent.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Frederik Flagstad ’08, who manages finances for Model United Nations (MUN), was unable to convince the LB to reallocate the $500 from the lunch program to his group’s budget. Flagstad circulated a letter among LB members explaining the group’s request to have $792 added to its budget in order to allow 12 students to participate in a national MUN conference.

MUN is one of several groups whose requested funding for trips was cut by the FAC. Some groups, like the Asian Student Alliance, may not be able to travel at all as a result. Flagstad said MUN would continue to seek funding from alternative sources and said the group may return to the LB next semester to request an additional allocation.

“We’ll search high and low,” Flagstad said to the LB, “[but] we believe we’ve exhausted almost every single [funding] source at this school.”

Matthew Stone