Student Council passed a bill Tuesday night which will create a committee to allocate $20,000 of unused programming funds from the Office of the Vice President of Student Affairs toward a pilot program to support large-scale green projects around Grounds.
The Green Initiative Funding Tomorrow program is Council's answer to a 76 percent majority of voting students who supported a referendum proposing a "green" fund in University-wide elections in February 2010.
Although Council already has in place an Environmental Sustainability Committee, which works on sustainable initiatives at the University, Tuesday's bill created a separate committee, which will be responsible for managing funding for extensive projects as well as selecting project submissions.
"It makes more sense to give it the due diligence," Council President Dan Morrison said. "With an ad hoc committee we can provide the representation necessary to do the funds justice."
The committee will consist of five undergraduate students, including Vice President for Organizations Aneesha Rao, two graduate students and three advisors, said Kyle Guest, task force leader for GIFT and co-chair of Council's Environmental Sustainability Committee.
The advisors, who could consist of faculty, staff or administrators, would be the only non-voting members of the committee, Guest said.
"They're going to be essential to evaluating these initiatives and bring an opportunity for partnership between students, faculty and staff," he added.
Guest has been in close contact with Christina Morell, associate vice president for student affairs, in regard to the GIFT initiative.
Morell said while the $20,000 will go toward launching the GIFT initiative, supplementary and continuous support - which some Council members have suggested could be drawn from an additional $5 in student activities fees - has not yet been finalized.
"We want to test the concepts of GIFT before we determine a possible ongoing fund source," she said in an email.
Guest emphasized that GIFT is only a pilot and must be successful in the fall to continue.
"[The committee is] burdened with the task of allocating money to the best projects possible," he said.
The pragmatic success of similar initiatives on other campuses nationwide, however, leaves Guest optimistic.
"There are a lot of ideas that could definitely be feasible and could be implemented," he said.
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