Setting the record straight on Snelgrove

By Andy Michaels, SGA Vice President

The front page of your Nov. 2 issue featured an article titled “SGA denies Snelgrove Scholarship funding.” Both this title and article are incredibly misleading.

The motion to donate $150 to the Victoria Snelgrove Memorial Scholarship was not made as a result of an appeal from a student organization, but rather by the journalism senator.,Dear Editor,

The front page of your Nov. 2 issue featured an article titled “SGA denies Snelgrove Scholarship funding.” Both this title and article are incredibly misleading.

The motion to donate $150 to the Victoria Snelgrove Memorial Scholarship was not made as a result of an appeal from a student organization, but rather by the journalism senator. This was not a motion to “fund” the scholarship, as the headline of this article might have you believe, but to make a donation.

The amount of $150 was completely arbitrary; the board was given no reasoning as to why that amount was chosen. Had that money been appropriated, it would have come from the SGA operations account, which is our own organizational budget, not the pool account, which is for the use of all students.

This is an important fact not made clear by this article. On the same note, it is completely unfair to judge us for providing food at one of our events. The food was purchased through our operations account.

As for the editorial, “SGA should choose Snelgrove over snacks,” it was stated that SGA is “charged with distributing over $400,000 in undergraduate student activity fees,” which is a misleading statement. That money is the basis for funding all student organizations, including The Beacon.

In the future, I would suggest, in the interest of journalistic integrity, that you make sure you have all the facts before printing a story.

-Andy Michaels