Sweetwater or Homecoming?

The SGA senate discussed the possibility of restricting student funding to downtown Milledgeville’s annual Sweetwater Festival at their weekly meeting today. The necessity of cutting back funding to the event has arisen from the fact that the SGA budget can no longer cover both Sweetwater and the new revamped GCSU Homecoming. This past homecoming week cost the students $52,000 and Sweetwater was $35,000.
“We can do partial funding for either, so we don’t necessarily have to pick one over the other,” said SGA President Ryan Greene. “This year we were able to do both, but that was because we had a very large reserve left over from the previous year.”
Two main arguments arose as to why student funding to Sweeter should at least be reduced. One was that Sweetwater can and will still go on without it, just with perhaps a slightly smaller budget. The other argument that came up was that even with student fees helping to produce the event, students were still having to pay admission, which seemed inconsistent to many of the SGA senators.
“We tried to get free admission for students,” said Greene, “but (the Sweetwater Committee) insisted that student ticket revenue is essential to the festival.”
A drawback to limiting funding would mean less say for SGA and the students in the music that has become an integral part to Sweetwater.
“The first year for Sweetwater was without SGA funding and the bands were much smaller and local,” Vice President for Student Affairs Bruce Harshbarger, said. “The stage was the back of a flat-bed trailer.”
No matter the cost, the general consensus among the senate was that Homecoming is more important to the students and should demand the most in monetary support. This should come as no surprise in the wake of the success of this past months Homecoming events.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 14 2008. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry