Marquette Student Government’s most critical power is student organization funding.

MUSG controls how funds are allocated, oversees the reimbursement process and reviews requests for funding. It’s no secret that money earned from student activity fees adds up to a hefty amount that, rightfully, gives MUSG this power to allocate funds for student activities like club sports as well as social and service organizations.

MUSG is generous with allocations overall. There are a few exceptions, but student organizations usually get some type of funding allocated to them from the student activity budget. The biggest problem is not many people are collecting the money allocated to them.

About one-fourth of the money allocated is not used by student organizations. That money is put into MUSG’s reserve fund.

The process of getting the money out of the fund is based on a reimbursement system. An organization’s treasurer, president or other member involved with finances is eventually reimbursed with a check from MUSG.

This process is tedious and may be hectic for some organizations because keeping track of itemized receipts is difficult. The system puts added stress on treasurers to keep meticulous records of spending and to put their own money up for use before reimbursement is given. That’s a lot of responsibility, and not every student may have the luxury of offering to pay for his or her organization’s event, promotional T-shirt order, or miscellaneous item before a refund is issued.

MUSG allocates more than it has in its budget because it knows there will be a percentage of the allocated funds that are not going to be collected by the organizations. Last year, 85 percent of the budgeted money for SOF was collected by organizations, which comes out to 74 percent of total allocated money. The reimbursement system is clearly imperfect.

With 15 percent of last year’s budget not collected, that equates to just more than $20,000 to join the reserve fund.

When student organizations don’t get the money back, neither do students. It just sits in limbo, waiting to be used for whatever MUSG deems fit and then rarely gets used.

Money that goes into the reserve fund is used for MUSG’s “capital goods.” For example, last year, it used the money to replace it’s own computers. MUSG may use that fund to buy new office supplies when needed, but it only uses a small fraction of the $254,493.36 available.

To fully analyze the SOF process, specific data is needed and specific cases need to be investigated. MUSG created an ad hoc committee Friday to investigate the SOF funding process, according to a press release Monday. The committee should review the process objectively and fairly for the students MUSG represents.

The Tribune would appreciate the opportunity to analyze the overall efficiency of how students’ money is used. This is by far the most important aspect to MUSG, and it warrants a thorough investigation and an open conversation. Students deserve to know how their activity fees are spent or not spent.

MUSG should work with the Tribune in the spirit of transparency to fully analyze the reimbursement process. This means having access to reimbursement numbers for each organization because the system is too imperfect not to analyze.