The release of exactly $6,000, around 10 percent of the “Event by Event” funds that students pay for with their Student Activity Fee, was approved by the Student Government Association (SGA) on Sept. 16. These funds will be used for a one night event, the Diwali Festival, which is hosted annually by NEIU’s Indian Student Association (ISA).
The ISA expected the SGA to approve their initial funding request for their event, but was surprised to have the SGA alter the request’s details. According to the SGA, this was done in order to make sure the money allotted to the ISA would be used in a way that they believed would be beneficial to the student body.
The changes made by SGA included altering the prices of the tickets for the event. The ISA will have to sell tickets at five dollars each, with a limit of two, to students and ten dollars each for non-students. This is radically different to prior ticket prices and limits, since students used to be able to buy up to five tickets, while non-student prices were lower.
Also, ISA initially wanted to donate two dollars of every ticket sold to the Asha Foundation like they have done in the past, but this year only a dollar of each ticket will be donated as a result of SGA’s changes. SGA also made sure that the rest of the money ISA made with the Diwali Festival would return to the “Event by Event” account. In other words, the ISA will not be able to profit from the event. After the Sept. 16 meeting, the ISA wrote a letter to the SGA explaining how they felt the SGA’s decisions were unfair. In it, they stressed how they felt the SGA treated them. “The ISA feels that it has been unjustifiably disrespected by the SGA,” reads one line from the letter.
Two weeks later, Prayagi Patel, the president of ISA was asked how the organization felt after having time to think about the results. “We feel disappointed,” said Patel “The changes imposed were one-sided and only set by SGA. Even if the changes were mandatory, had there been some consultation with ISA, the entire process would have been more fair instead of the outright imposition of the conditions.”
In the response letter, the ISA also deemed it unfair that they would be unable to make a profit off the Diwali Festival. In a letter from the SGA, spearheaded by Student Senator Stephan McCollom, a response was given to the many accusations the ISA stated. To the profit question, the Senate responded by saying, “Somehow it has become a contrived ideal of the ISA that this is a fair and equitable agreement and that the ‘practice’ of making money for the club should be shouldered by the entire student body of this University through their student activity fee.”
The SGA also pointed out the fact that they had learned from the organization’s past mistakes. This was referring to last year’s approval of $9,000 for the Diwali Festival. “…$2 of each ticket [went] to the Asha Foundation, $1 returned to the event-by-event general fund and THE REST OF ALL PROCEEDS going to the ISA! This [meant] that 40 percent of all Campus Wide ticket sales and 70 percent of all non-University attendee sales went into the ISA Club Account.” Because of this, the event-by-event money ran out early in the semester, leaving many clubs and organizations unable to hold events as a result of the lack of funds.
For her last remarks, Patel explained why the Diwali festival is so important for NEIU as a whole. “The Diwali show is one of the biggest events on campus and a very high visibility event not only in the South Asian community and other communities apart from it, but as well as among prospective students in high school.” The Diwali Festival is still on track to take place on Oct. 23.