The Student Finance Committee (SFC) received its monetary allocation for the current semester on Wednesday, Jan. 28.

The SFC’s budget, which is $65,467.50 this semester, comes from the Student Activity Fee, and relies directly on NMU enrollment numbers.

Those numbers for the winter 2009 semester were released on Monday, Jan. 26. There are currently 7,640 undergraduate students at Northern and a total of 107,582 credit hours. Any student taking more than 12 credit hours must pay the Student Activity Fee.

“Our goal is that we allocate every last dollar to student organizations hosting events that benefit the student body,” said Andrew Foster, chair of the SFC. “The hope is that by funding a diverse selection of activities that every student will find something they are interested in attending.”

According to Foster, the SFC received an initial total of $158,775 this semester. A certain amount of this money is set aside for earmarked fund groups (EFGs), which include First Aid Productions, Campus Cinema, Gonzo Media and other groups that have proven able to consistently bring entertainment to campus.

After dispersing money to the EFGs, the SFC was left with $65,467.50. After that amount was added to money carried over from last semester, the SFC had in excess of $110,000 to use for the winter 2009 semester.

However, after factoring in the budgets for four events that had already been approved for this semester, the SFC will now have $61,557.67.

“Without the SFC, student groups would be forced to bottle drives and bake sales trying to bring their event to campus. Unfortunately, this means artists such as Jason Mraz, Dirks Bentley and Bill Cosby would never have come to campus,” Foster said.

Organizations interested in submitting a budget for funding can receive a budget request form from the ASNMU office or online at http://asnmu.nmu.edu/sfc.

“The committee as a whole always strives for an unbiased decision to fund events, based off of what we think the students would attend,” Foster said.

The amount of money allocated to the SFC has declined since last semester, which is normal as enrollment generally decreases into the winter semester. From fall 2008 to winter 2009, undergraduate enrollment dropped by nearly 1,000 to 7640 this semester.

Though the SFC received less money because the drop in enrollment, the rollover from the previous semester increased the amount they have to offer students.

“The benefit is that students have something to do every week, in fact, almost every single day,” Foster said.