DSG Judiciary to hear case against SOFC Wednesday evening

A petition has been filed with the Duke Student Government Judiciary regarding the exclusion of FORM magazine in DSG's annual budget.

At the end of every school year, student organizations can submit annual budget requests to DSG's Student Organization Finance Committee. SOFC then approves or denies a portion or all of the request. Senior Dev Dabke, chief justice of the DSG Judiciary, wrote in an email to The Chronicle that the Judiciary was considering a case challenging the SOFC's decision to keep FORM from submitting an annual budget request. FORM magazine is an arts and lifestyle publication at Duke.

"FORM is filing a Petition against SOFC, which barred them from submitting an annual budget, since FORM submitted some auditing paperwork late," Dabke wrote Wednesday afternoon.

Dabke noted that the hearing will take place at 6:30 p.m. tonight in the DSG boardroom. FORM declined to comment on the pending hearing.

SOFC Chair Luke Farrell, a junior, said that FORM submitted paperwork related to its annual budget request eight hours past the deadline. Then SOFC Chair Alexa Soren subsequently denied FORM's request on the basis of its tardiness. Farrell expressed ambivalence regarding whether FORM should have been denied funding altogether for being eight hours late.

"While I cannot personally speak for the former chair, I empathize with oversight on the behalf of students," Farrell said. "I understand when minor oversights are made by groups. I do believe that the consequences for oversights should be proportional to the severity of the oversights that were made."

When asked whether he thought Soren's decision to exclude FORM was proportional to the severity of FORM's mistake, Farrell said, "I don't believe so."

Last year, SOFC received about $900,000 in funding requests for its annual budget and eventually allotted $370,000 of those requests.

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