The activities fair may be over, but you've still got a while to find your niche in Columbia's extracurricular scene. To help you sift through the alphabet soup, our series of club crib sheets continues with groups that hand out money and groups that may eventually make lots of money.

Governing Boards and Councils (a.k.a. The Man)

Activities Board at Columbia (ABC) - This oversight organization funds publications, cultural groups, competition groups--basically everything SGB doesn't pay for. Every club competes to have its friends on the board of representatives in hopes of upping their allocations.

Engineering Student Council (ESC) - ESC may be elected undemocratically—the executive board, which composes a much larger percentage of the total student body than any of the other councils, selects the president--but they do come up with the most wonderful web applications.

Student Government Association - Barnard College's student council, this year headed by Sarah Besnoff. SGA mostly stays on the west side of Broadway, but frequently cosponsors events with the other undergraduate councils.

General Studies Student Council (GSSC) - Now with a cute owl logo and a website that's at least helpful and up to date, GSSC is one of the more constituency-conscious councils out there. Bwog can only hope current president Brody Berg will be as entertaining as ex-leader Nico Cunningham.

Well, they moved quickly this time. As we wrote about before, the announcement of a joint appearance by Obama and McCain on campus next Thursday took student government and group leaders completely by surprise.

Just before midnight, though, the presidents of the student councils, club governing boards, and Panhellenic councils have sent an email to President Lee Bollinger, as well as fellow administrators interim Dean of Student Affairs Kevin Shollenberger, Executive Vice President for Student Services Jeffrey Scott, and Housing & Dining Vice President Scott Wright.

The email asks for two accomodations: "a fair share of the tickets made available are apportioned to undergraduates" and "arrangements, similar to those made for the Ahmadinejad visit, should be made for all students, including but not limited to the installation of a large screen on South Lawn." In other words, "make sure everyone gets an equal chance at tickets, and give us another jumbotron." The full letter will be printed in Thursday's Spectator, but you can save yourself from waiting outside a residence hall until noon and just read it below the fold.

ABC has just released a spreadsheet of 2008-2009's club allocations. (As you might remember, ABC released their 2007-2008 allocations/debt spreadsheet in February, prompting SGB to do the same and creating a minor brouhaha in the process.) So onto the compare-contrast:

The most noticeable budgetary increase is that of Bacchanal and Special Events, which received just $18,000 in initial allocations for 2007-2008 but this year was awarded an envious $75,739. (Here's hoping -- er, demanding? -- tickets for next Spring Concert will be free.) Most groups, including the Black Students Organization ($6,229), the Blue and White ($12,075), Helvidius ($5,500) Clefthangers ($1,115), and The Fed ($4,075), among others, received similar allocations to those of last year.

The Society of Automotive Engineers' allocation shrank from $8,669 to $7,997 -- maybe ABC wasn't as impressed with their homemade car as Bwog was? Philo saw an increase of about $300, up to $1,875 from last year's $1,510. Varsity Show's budget remains a mystery shrouded in an enigma, as do those of heritage months.

For your own investigative purposes, last year's allocations are here and this year's are here. (Though keep in mind, many of the clubs are recognized by both ABC and SGA and receive dual funding.) And for all the ABC news and updates you'd ever want, visit their new-ish blog.

On Monday night, the Student Governing Board voted to elect their new board, as well as to determine new group recognition and to derecognize inactive groups. Their new board is as follows:

Chair: Arjun Kapoor, CC'09, Amnesty International
Vice-Chair: Jacob Taber, GS-JTS'09, College Democrats & Hillel
Treasurer: Devora Aharon, CC'10, Hillel
Secretary: Jim Downie, CC'10, College Democrats (and Bwog staffer!)
Representatives-at-Large:
Nishi Dedania, SEAS'09, Hindu Students Organization
Charles Dwyer, CC'09, CU International Relations Forum
Sana Khalid, CC'11, MSA, AHIMSA and USINPAC
Aaron Krieger, CC'10, Hillel Executive Board, Gayava, Columbia Queer Alliance
Ali Shafei, CC'10, MSA
Eugenio Suarez, CC'11, Cuban American National Foundation
Elissa Verrilli, BC'11, SEEJ

New groups and groups-no-longer are after the jump—and in keeping with the theme du jour of objectivism, the ill-fated Ayn Rand Discussion Group is one of the latter.

Like many of you, Bwog was curious and excited upon learning that ABC (unlike last year) had released their 2007-2008 budget and student group allocations. But what of the Student Governing Board, (the ABC of political and religious groups, among others)? According to Jon Siegel, a chair of SGB, the SGB has been in talks with various groups for about a year in attempts to publicize their budgets. This year, SGB will be releasing their full budget and all of their allocations.

"The only reason we haven't published ours yet is because a member of a student council asked us not to release ours for another week or so so that they would be able to release theirs without appearing to have been pressured into it by us," Siegel said.

Because SGB serves mostly religious and political student groups, clubs and events, the release of individual allocations to groups is a very sensitive and charged issue. Bwog will be publishing SGB's budget as it is released, check back for updates.

- JNW

Newsworthy day for belly dancers and linguists, the Fall 2007 New Group Recognition process over at the Activities Board at Columbia comes to a close. There were five groups to make the cut: Columbia Ballet Collective, Columbia Bellydancing Troupe, Columbia Linguistic Society, Organization of Latin American Students, and Onyx.

ABC also released their 2007-2008 budget, which includes the allocations and debts of each ABC-sponsored club, event, and publication. It's available for close reading here. More after the jump.

The following e-mail was sent to all ABC groups not exactly one hour ago, but instead 84 minutes ago, and has so far stirred some consternation among prickly group members.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: [redacted]
Date: Jan 29, 2007 11:10 PM
Subject: [ABC] ABC Information Needed ASAP
To: abc_clubs@columbia.edu

Dear ABC Clubs,

In an effort increase our database of information and knowledge, we would like each ABC recognized club to write a succinct description of their organization, describing what the club does and what kind of roles it fulfills on campus. We would also like each club to provide the total number of people in the group. Please email this
information to [redacted] no later than 11:59 pm on Friday February 2nd. If we do not receive any information from your organization, there will be an investigation of your group's activity on campus. Thank you for your
understanding and we look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Allison Fortune
ABC Secretary

------

ABC president Keith Hernandez had this to say on the subject:

"ABC, in an attempt to continuously enhance our services, is requesting information from groups so that we can ease communication, better our archiving of group information, and put this new information on a soon to be released new website. If groups do not respond to the ABC request, we will then seek out the information through personal emails to the group leaders. If they do not respond to those, then we will consult with SDA on getting a description. Suffice to say, not having a description from a group really hampers ABC in our ability to serve the group."