Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
Over the past year, student groups have been spending considerably less amounts of money. This has resulted in a surplus of funds for the Student Budget Committee (SBC). Some of these excess funds were used in covering expenses for repairing, replacing, and buying equipment, but SBC still has funds left over which they hope to allocate towards new ideas proposed by students. These grants are referred to as concept grants.
SBC has, according to Greg Leiserson 06, made allocations for five concept grants: for furniture and kitchen items for the ML breakfast room, for a contribution towards the projector installed in Paces earlier this semester, for a digital darkroom created by SCCS and the Photo Club, for several different projects organized by the Student Health and Wellness Committee (educational posters, a Sharples cookbook, and a Sharples quiet room), and for a circus project organized by Joanna Wright ’08.
In mid-April, Joanna Wright’s circus project was helped out a lot by the concept grant she received. “Basically,” said Wright, “I pulled together a list of things I needed to buy and then went to the SBC and tried to convince them that I really did need thirty juggling balls.” There were three three hour long workshops, and during the last one people were encouraged to look and play around with things.
Jessica Bachrach ’06 is the breakfast room coordinator in ML. She was very happy about the new additions to the kitchen. “I am not always thinking of ways to innovate, and I can’t do everything by myself anyway, so it is nice to have someone like Chris come up with ideas like writing a concept grant to get us a waffle maker and coffee maker,” said Bachrach. Chris Green ’09 wrote the proposal and now, thanks to him, the ML community is enjoying these new additions.
