After 98 student groups requested $350,000 at last weekend’s Student Activities Commission summit, SAC allocated a total of $146,000 to the groups.

SAC allocated all of its available funds for this semester’s summit after withholding $5,000 for its ad hoc fund and $30,000 for its travel fund, according to SAC Chair Patrick Musgrave (COL ’16).

Musgrave estimated that students at SAC’s previous summit in April requested $300,000, and said that there was a marked increase in requests at this semester’s summit.

SAC has around $329,000 to budget per year at two separate summits, and its funds come from the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee, The Office of Student Affairs and, minimally, from a university partnership with Coca-Cola, providing $240,000, $81,500 and $7,500, respectively.

“We’ve never had $350,000 worth of requests. … The fundamental flaw of SAC is that the more you ask for the more you get,” Musgrave said. “We’re not subjective, really, we follow very objective funding procedures.”

The summit lasted two days, and student groups presented their funding needs and budget submissions for the semester to the commission. According to Musgrave, students occasionally feel slighted by the commission because they do not know about SAC’s criteria for budget allocation.

“I think that [SAC’s] subjectivity is misconstrued a lot,” Musgrave said. “We are not a capricious body that just decides to fund some things and not fund other things. If your event meets a certain set of requirements, then you’re going to get funding.”

Animalia Vice President and Treasurer Casey Nolan (COL ’17) requested $681.90 from SAC and received $322.38.

“Overall, I am very pleased with the money we received,” Nolan wrote in an email to The Hoya. “I understand that SAC only has so much money to allocate and that it is the prerogative of student groups to fund raise for a portion of their costs.”

According to Nolan, SAC has provided her club with necessary support and advice.

“SAC has provided Animalia with a lot of support in navigating the budget process, as well as with little things such as flyer printing,” Nolan wrote. “I have always found SAC members to be willing to help and answer questions, and they have helped Animalia’s first official semester as a student group run smoothly.”

Director of the Center for Student Engagement Erika Cohen Derr said that SAC provides a necessary service to student groups on campus.

“SAC is an important part of student life at Georgetown because it lives at the center of many questions about student programming and student organizations,” Cohen-Derr wrote in an email to The Hoya. “SAC leaders take a bird’s eye view of student organizations and campus programming. They are uniquely positioned to hear proposals for programs from over 100 organizations, and are in the position to evaluate program proposals and compare these proposals to actual programming efforts.”