This week, the Student Union announced a new proposal designed to reform the club finance Marathon process by having a single two-week session per semester, rather than two separate week-long Marathons per semester. At a press conference held this Wednesday, Union Vice President David Herbstritt ’17 explained his belief that the changes will smooth out the Marathon process, by both giving clubs more time to decide and the Allocations Board more time to make decisions.
The Brandeis Hoot supports this proposal and hopes that the Union will support it moving forward. Throughout this year, clubs have expressed great frustrations at the funding process and, as always, at some funding outcomes. If the process for all funding began a semester beforehand, we believe that much of the stress and pressure would be alleviated for students and A-Board alike.
This proposal would make the process less confusing for students, because they wouldn’t have to choose which Marathon to participate in. Currently there are many Marathons per semester: early Marathon, full-semester Marathon and regular Marathon. Under the new proposal, just one Marathon would take place in a similar way as what is now full-semester Marathon. This would require clubs to plan the entire semester before it starts, which would benefit A-Board because they would get to see all the clubs’ requested allocations at once, rather than consider some clubs during early Marathon and others a few weeks later.
Because A-Board would be able to see the requests for the entire semester at once, they would be able to plan more accurately for the semester. They could also avoid giving too little funding to clubs during early Marathon, since they would no longer have to make sure to save enough funding for regular Marathon. If some clubs may not be able to plan so far ahead into the semester, emergency Marathon should still exist for unforeseen financial situations.
Although adopting a new proposal may be confusing at first, we believe the benefits of Marathon changes would greatly outweigh any difficulties and make the allocations process much easier for students.
