Every spring, the Carleton Student Association (CSA) budget committee conducts spring allocations, where committee members meet to decide how much funding student organizations and events will receive throughout the year. A key part of spring allocations is a series of presentations by club leaders where they outline their organization’s funding needs to the budget committee. The budget committee received a record number of requests this year, and to recognize Carleton’s quirkiest, nerdiest and strangest organizations, CSA has decided to present an award for “Most Interesting Budget Request.” Here are the nominees:
KRLX
Aside from all of the funding for upkeep of KRLX’s 24-hour radio programming, KRLX requested $5,000 for a retro boombox that the KRLX treasurer claimed will be used “for advertising.”
“A KRLX board member will be stationed on the Bald Spot with the boombox on their shoulder, head bumping to the funky tunes,” the treasurer said. “Before long, a crowd, or a mosh pit perhaps, will form around them, thus helping our radio station grow!
Ultimately, KRLX did not get the funding for their boombox dream, but CSA appreciated the effort.
“It was cool that the treasurer acted out what he wanted to happen,” one budget committee member said,” but it was hard to see the vision when he was using an empty Hamms case as a boombox, so it was kind of hard to justify funding it.”
Juggling Club
The Carleton Juggling Fish usually requests a small amount of money for materials and showcase costs, but this year club leadership also requested an additional $1,500 for “blow torches and trench coats”.
“We really want to push our experienced jugglers into more crazy stunts, and juggling flaming blow torches would be a great way to get engagement,” said president Lupe Deloop. “And of course, we would need the trench coats for students to disguise themselves while buying and juggling with the blowtorches.”
The budget committee has not yet decided whether or not to fund this request, as members are still fighting over whether to broker a deal in which the club could cut their unicycle wheel grease and glow-in-the-dark jester caps in order to obtain torch-and-trench-coat funding.
Pickling club
The pickling club is relatively new, and club leadership had not originally planned to request any money at all. But a dream that one of the members had while in a sauerkraut-induced trance led the club to request $50,000 to build and decorate their very own Pickle-mobile.
“They were saying they could either build the car from scratch or buy an Oscar Meyer Weiner-mobile, but they weren’t sure which one would be more expensive,” the CSA treasurer said. “Either way, I don’t really know if this is sustainable, I mean, a car that runs on pickle juice? I don’t think that could work, and even if it did, who’s going to eat all the pickles?”
