Programming Board members are no longer solely in charge of organizing events. Instead, students and organizations submit grant requests to a weekly pool of programming funds.

The weekly pool allows up to $1,500 to $2,000 to be spent for each of the 24 programming weeks in an academic year.

Student Affairs Vice President Shawn Brooks said this new system is giving students the ability to initiate some event ideas.

Despite the new system, Programming Board members still decide which events proposed by students receive funding and continue to control initiation of monthly events.

We notice the benefits of this new system, but, since students don’t have control over which events receive funding, students at least should be informed of how our money is being spent.

We should know which events are being funded by how much money, and, after the event, we should be informed how many students attended.

This can be possible by simply involving students in Programming Board meetings.

Finding out how much of students’ activity proceeds are being spent for events has been a long-standing problem for Advocate journalists.

Also, finding out how many students attended or benefited from a student-funded event has been difficult.

Both types of information are needed to determine whether money is being spent wisely –to hold accountable those who decide how to spend it.

We applaud changes in the flawed system that has spewed out tens of thousands of dollars in student fee money without much accountability.

We hope the changes include accountability that rises to some notch higher than nonexistent.