Over the course of the semester, the SGA will discuss BucFund, which grants money to different organizations on campus. These organizations will then use the money for different events.
“There’s a mission conference that we’re going to in December,” Lisa Fobers said. “Our goal is that we will be able to subsidize some of the money, because the cost of the event is somewhere between $800 to $900 per student.”
Fobers is with the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, and the event they are attending is called Urbana. Fobers said she hopes to get money to help lessen the cost for students.
“The hope was that we could get money to subsidize their lodging and their travel expenses,” she said.
The mission trip would benefit students because it would allow them to make new contacts.
“They would come back with a lot of networking information,” Fobers said, “and information about global contacts. There’s an exhibit hall that has hundreds of exhibitors that have connections with social justice, connections over seas and Christian and Non-Christian groups that are doing social justice programs. And they would obviously become equipped to become better leaders on campus.”
Another organization hoping to get money from BucFund is the Native American Cultural Organization.
“We are working with Multicultural Affairs to do the International Day Of Peace,” Catrinia Whatley said. “We’re the Native American Festival and International Day of Peace. It’s scheduled for this Friday and is going to be held out in the Quad.”
Whatley said the organization went to talk to BucFund because the event would have demonstrations, and the participants would need some form of payment.
“Pretty much what we are trying to do is to be able to reimburse a lot of our demonstrators,” Whatley said. “We are bringing them in from the Cherokee Nation in North Carolina, and they actually are semi-professional to professional performers in dancing, drumming and art.”
Whatley said the Native American Cultural Organization is also looking to sponsor several high school students from the Cherokee community.
“Our goal is to bring them here to show them how ETSU would be an asset for them to make their alma mater,” Whatley said. “And also help to broaden the cultural horizons of ETSU by including more Native Americans.”
