Six campus student groups are currently petitioning to receive Student Union block funding for the next year.

Each of the groups petitioning—Uncle Joe’s, Emergency Support Team (EST), Lucidity, Campus Y, Bear Discounts and WUnderground—must receive 1,071 signatures, 15 percent of the student body, by Feb. 22. Then, their budget is voted on by the student body in the SU spring election. If it passes with a two-thirds student vote, their petition is funded.

Most SU-funded groups on campus receive their funding by submitting a budget to be approved by Student Union each semester, but they wouldn’t necessarily be guaranteed the full amount outlined in the budget. With block funding, however, groups are guaranteed the full amount for the entire year as long as the petition, which outlines the groups’ goals and proposed budget, gets the required number of signatures and passes in the election.

WUnderground, the University’s satirical magazine, is also circulating a $511,000 petition to fund a boat. If they receive enough signatures, SU will have to reallocate money from the general budget to fund the petition.

WUnderground’s president, senior Carter Lord Paterson, said that even though he favors the block funding process as a whole, the group’s petition is designed to prove a point about the weaknesses of the system.

“We really have been advocating that for every single person we’ve asked to sign our petition, we’ve insisted that they sign the Uncle Joe’s and EST petitions first, because those are far more critical services,” Paterson said. “I would still fully encourage all students to support ours for the meme of it, for the shenanigan itself and to also prove a point that there is change that needs to be made towards the process so that ridiculous things like this can’t happen and then all of a sudden, Student Union is scrambling to make amendments.”

Sophomore Steven Kish, SU’s vice president of administration, says SU is conscious of the adjustments that would have to be made if WUnderground’s petition gets to 1,071 signatures.

“One of the things that is very real about this situation is that that money does have to come from somewhere,” Kish said. “I think we as Student Union definitely will be as thoughtful as possible as we weigh the things that would essentially make up for that $500,000, but also do recognize that the student body on election day would need to make some decisions about where they want their student activity fee to be allocated.”

Kish says that the amount requested would likely come from a combination of funding that otherwise would go to programming, student groups and campus contributions.

“$500,000 is a large amount of money to cut and I think students would definitely have to carefully consider that money that they’d be letting go of,” Kish said. “I think a lot of students at this point are signing the petition in a satirical way, some may be doing it seriously. I think that we will have to play out in the coming week as we get closer to the petition submission deadline to really have a better feel for whether or not they’ll reach that 1,071 mark.”

VP of Finance and junior Shelly Gupta says that as of the past few years, approximately $100,000 is petitioned via block funding.

“Senate and Treasury will have to really be critical,” Gupta said. “We already have a deficit of $500,000, so adding another $500,000 potentially could make the job much harder, but we will have to pass a budget assuming that the block funding will go through.”

The leaders of 11 student groups recently published an op-ed in Student Life citing the consequences of the boats’ funding for their respective groups.

“As funny as it would be to have SU pay for this boat, that $511,000 needs to go towards student group programming, which we see as SU’s primary purpose,” the authors wrote. “Our student groups already do not receive all the money we request from SU and we don’t know what we would do if our funds have to be cut further.”

In January’s special election, SU proposed an amendment that would have lowered the number of signatures required and allowed groups to pursue alternative methods of receiving block funding, but it did not pass.

Junior Daniel Tanenbaum, co-owner of Bear Necessities, is currently petitioning so that every undergraduate student would have a discount card. He also served on the SU task force that proposed the amendment to lower signatures for block funding petitions.

“I found that it’s helpful for every student to benefit the same. If we were to get block funding then we would use the money to distribute it to any student,” Tanenbaum said. “Whereas right now, the business currently sells the cards at the beginning of the year and not everyone has access to that if they choose not to pay for it. So we’re trying to limit the barrier of entry and distribute it to everyone.”

Tanenbaum said that the process in general was beneficial to the campus and encouraged students to participate.

“I would encourage people to vote for all the petitions,” Tanenbaum said. “There’s no limit to how many you can sign. Overall, it benefits the community.”

Treasurer of Campus Y junior Megan Schulman said that getting enough signatures is crucial for the future success of her group. Campus Y encompasses 25 student-run volunteer programs that focus on a variety of issues.

“Our group will be at a tremendous loss if we do not meet our goal,” Schulman said. “The Campus Y would be unable to function as a student organization. The work our programs have done and the impact the Y volunteers have made on the community would not be possible without block funding.”