Raymond Baccari
Editor-in-Chief
Student organizations on campus have a few big announcements to digest. The first of several is that the Student Organizations Award Ceremony, also known as the STORGYS, is returning.
Student Community Government broke this news in a roundtable they held Wednesday with leaders from every student organization on campus.
“This year, we are going to be bringing back the STORGYS, the Student Organizations Award Ceremony, which will be held [on] Friday, April 14th at the Crowne Plaza from 5 to 10 p.m.,” SCG Secretary Matthew Jacques said during the roundtable at Gaige Hall.
The last time this ceremony happened was in 2019, with it not occurring during the last two school years due to COVID. This event is essentially the Oscars or Grammys, but for student organizations on campus.
For an organization to be eligible for an award, Jacques said they must fill out and turn in their program evaluation reports. In these reports, organizations are asked to list events they held in between the dates of March 1, 2022 and Feb. 23, 2023 that they would like to have qualified for an award. The due date for these reports is Feb. 24 at 12 p.m.
Once the reports are turned in, SCG will send out ballots via email for all students to vote for who they believe should win each award. Those votes will be tallied and the winners will be announced during the ceremony on April 14 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Warwick.
Another announcement made during the roundtable was an upcoming town hall with RIC President, Dr. Jack Warner. Originally, the plans were for a second luncheon that leaders of student organizations would have had with Warner on Feb. 22. The luncheon was canceled with no publicly-made explanation.
The town hall with Warner is set for Wednesday, March 1 in the Student Union Ballroom from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. All students are allowed to attend this town hall, where they can express their concerns and changes they want to see made at the college directly to Warner.
In other news, student organizations on campus have recently gone through their budget request process for the 2023-2024 academic year.
The current outlook is that all student organizations are going to see cuts in their budgets or not receive close to what they requested from SCG. What is causing this is as RIC’s enrollment continues to go down, so does the budget for SCG since they get their money to distribute to student organizations via students’ student activity fees.
The Anchor reached out to the college to see what RIC’s current enrollment numbers look like. These were the numbers given to The Anchor:
Enrollment numbers SCG received paint a similar picture. The numbers they received for fall 2022 was 3,701 full-time and 280 part-time undergraduate students, totaling to 3,981 undergraduates. The number of graduate students in their numbers showed 1,018 full-time students along with 788 part-time students – a total of 1,806 graduate students. For the spring 2023 semester, the number they have is a total of 5,275 students – 4,267 undergraduate and 1,008 graduate students.
The next step in the budget process is the SCG Finance Committee gives their recommendations to each student organization regarding each of their budgets. The numbers given to each organization were voted on by the committee after all the organizations pitched their budget rationales in hearings earlier this month.
After a student organization receives the Finance Committee’s recommendation, they can respond with one of two options: Satisfied or unsatisfied. Those who respond with dissatisfaction can make a second pitch, but this time to the full parliament before SCG votes on student organizations’ final budget numbers for next year.
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