Despite the efforts of Government of the Student Body members to gain input on finance policies, student turnout has been nearly nonexistent for a weeklong series of forums meant to clarify GSB’s rules for funding student organizations.

GSB members said preprofessional organizations have recently raised concerns that they should be GSB-funded.

Jason Carroll, GSB finance director, said one student attended the forums this week. He attributed the low numbers to a few factors.

“It could be that we didn’t advertise the forums enough, or it could be the time of year,” said Carroll, senior in civil engineering.

In the past, he said, students tend to show more concern for financial allocation just before GSB is expected to vote on a controversial or hotly debated topic.

“Students turn out more when there’s an important issue at hand,” he said. “We’re not really seeing financial issues like that at the moment.”

Carroll said the handling of preprofessional organizations, student groups associated with a specific career field or major, could create conflict this year.

“In the past, we haven’t funded these groups, but some of the organizations raised concerns,” Carroll said. “How we define ‘preprofessional’ may be a topic of some debate.”

Brian Coffman, GSB treasurer, said because preprofessional groups are commonly funded by their associated college, GSB doesn’t give them money.

“We have limited funds to give, so we want to give to groups who can’t get money elsewhere,” said Coffman, senior in accounting. “If we were only able to give a little to all these different groups, a lot of them would suffer.”

Carroll said GSB has been holding the forums to encourage student feedback about the financial allocation process for student clubs and organizations.

“Every year in the fall, the criteria for how we fund student clubs has to be readopted,” he said. “Basically, these forums are a preliminary measure to find out what students think.”

He said GSB will vote on the allocation criteria in November.

Although the readoption process didn’t generate conflict last year, he said votes in the past have been contentious.