I am writing to the readers of the Iowa State Daily once again to comment on the things GSB feels it is rational to spend money on. Maybe I’m crazy, or maybe I’m just upset about a second reduction in funding for my favorite student organization, but if you don’t mind reading a few statistics and making your own decisions, please read on.

First off, I’m sorry, but the Iowa State Daily really needs to figure out how to report on things with lots of numbers. Giving us the planned GSB allocations is all well and fine as long as you plan to release some analysis of the numbers later. I shall pick up where you left off.

You may have seen the GSB funding numbers in the Daily yesterday. After crunching the numbers, I came across some interesting trends and found some interesting things that GSB currently funds. Did you know that GSB plans to spend 22.5 percent of your general allocations money on their student legal counsel office? I barely realized that this office existed and certainly didn’t realize that GSB pays the full-time salary for the attorney who works there — $250,000.

Did you know that even though there is not yet funding to buy the Cyclone Cinema Theater, the budget allocation of $46,158.58 for the theater exists already and removes $46,000 from the pool of money for other organizations and services in the $1.1 million budget — even though the theater plan could still be scrapped? GSB also plans to provide money — $32,000 — to the YMCA and YWCA on campus as they have in past years, groups that I didn’t even realize existed.

What exactly merits funding? Should that funding be based on the student population that a certain group can affect, or on other criteria? Should one take into account that some activities are more expensive than others? I’m sure that GSB’s Finance Committee takes all this into account, but I worry that they are afraid of killing off a group’s funding or killing a service that has been provided for years simply because it has been provided for years.

In my mind, a friend said it best when he noted the need for student-run organizations, because “they teach you what you don’t learn in class.” Services are great and events are fun, but without dividing funding between student groups in an equal and just fashion, what use is GSB? I think I can live with the 81.6 percent cut to the reasonable budget submitted by my favorite group, the Iowa State Space Society. I’d guess that Orchesis I can live with the 86.4 percent cut to their submitted budget too. What I question is why GSB doesn’t cut 20 percent across the board, but hammers hard on organizations’ budgets while granting larger services nearly 100 percent of what they ask for.

After dividing the GSB allocations request into groups of student organizations, GSB services, campus magazines and campus events, I found that services, magazines and events got 85 percent of what they requested from GSB — or $900,000 of $1,060,000 — while student organizations only got about 35 percent of what they asked for (excluding zero-funded groups) in the planned 2011 budget. I don’t have the time nor the patience to go back and do a similar study on previous years, but I would guess that the percentage going to organizations has been dropping as GSB continually agrees to pick up new things, like a portion of SUB’s funding dropped by the MU due to budget cuts, and lump them into regular allocations. There is a reason governments do across-the-board cuts, the reason being that the large budget areas hurt just as much as the small areas. How are organizations like mine supposed to bring up attendance, enhance the learning experience, and fly rockets two-thirds of the way into space (yes, a group is working on that) when we get less money overall than portable toilets for the rodeo? Answer that, GSB.

Rick Hanton is a senior in computer engineering.