The SGO allocation was made before the SFC had a chance to review the crew team's appeal for discretionary funding. "I didn't want the possibility of their not getting the money," said SGO President Michelle Oliveros-Larsen '02.
"Regardless of what's going on with the SFC, I wanted crew to exist for the remainder of the semester at the minimum," she added.
A committee composed of Assistant Dean of Students Samuel Haynes and the SGO executive board, with the exception of SFC chair Will Johnson '03, has begun conversations with the SFC and the crew team concerning the issues surrounding the allocation. Members of the committee would not comment on their findings at this time.
"The committee and its constituent members have no comment until we release our official report," said SGO Vice President Amy Summerville '02. "We reported at the Senate meeting [on Monday] that we have interviewed both parties and anticipate having a recommendation for the Senate's consideration next Monday at our regularly scheduled meeting."
Crew team members say that they hope the SFC will make policy changes to prevent funding problems in the future.
"What we, the crew team, along with the SFC and SGO, are doing now is trying to get club sports-particularly crew, ski and rugby, I believe-into a 'safer' place with the SFC," said Baker Franke '02, captain of the crew team.
Franke suggested that certain club teams be allotted fixed budgets by the SFC at the beginning of each year so that they are assured of proper funding. "Place us under the SFC in such a way that our sports cannot be dismantled at the whim of students who may or may not know what they're doing," said Franke.
Oliveros-Larsen said she believed that communication lies at the heart of many of the crew team's funding problems. "A lot of what I feel is happening with crew is communication problems, not between the crew team and the SFC, but between the crew team's leaders from this year and those from last year."
Problems between the crew team and the SFC began when they were denied funding in the first round of allocation. While crew team members said that they submitted a budget in the fall, SFC officers deny that any such budget was submitted to them.
"I'm not saying that the SFC did exact some arbitrary measure to de-fund us, but throughout this ordeal we had no reason to believe otherwise," said Franke. "We were often told one thing, or one thing was implied and another happened."
"We never got a budget from them last spring, so we didn't include them in the budget," said Irv Rakhlin '04, who is the SFC subcommittee chair for athletics and tournaments. "The underlying fact is that we want the school to have a crew team, but there are policies and procedures that we have to follow."
Rakhlin said that, though the crew team was not allocated funding in the first round of the SFC allocation process, it was given 64 percent of what it requested, three percent more than the average team.
"Nobody is working against the crew team. We believe in the crew team, but they have to work with us to make sure other clubs are not adversely affected," Rakhlin said.
Rakhlin added that the SFC plans to guide crew team members to secure additional funding from outside sources. "We are going to draft a letter to the crew team asking them to work with us and themselves to find additional outside funding," he said.
Oliveros-Larsen granted the crew team's request for discretionary funding after concluding that the funds were essential to the operation of the team.
"This was a real emotional hardship for them. Their whole extracurricular lives revolve around this sport," said Oliveros-Larsen. "In this case, we had a lot of people knocking down our door saying they did the best they could to get funding. I'm not going to say they didn't."