The Board of Trustees Student Liaison meeting took place Wednesday, Sept. 16 and announced that the Student Programming Fund was granted a $150,000 dollar increase.

The funding will be put toward the Student Budget Allocation Committee and $30,000 will be going toward Program Board. Student Budget Allocation Committee fuels student organizations at Central Michigan University. The money will go toward projects that organizations feel strongly about, like educating students on disability awareness. It can also be used for students and organizations to gain more knowledge by going to conferences out of state.

The previous base-budget was $80,000, which was split between conferences and projects. With this increase, the Student Government Association is hoping to be able to reach out to more organizations and possibly fund some that they previously had to turn down. They also will now have the ability to fully fund projects, although they aren't sure if this will happen due to spreading the money evenly to multiple organizations.

At the conference, SGA President and Detroit senior Charles Mahone also spoke about the success of the President's Gala held in Powers Ballroom this past term, as well as success of MainStage. MainStage brought 270 different organizations, of which 206 were RSOs, 30 club sports, 34 Greek organizations, 32 departments from CMU and 81 local businesses.

President of Residence Hall Assembly and sophomore Mike DeGregory started off by sharing that there are officially 6,130 residents living on campus. He discussed how Residence Life has been working on reorganizing procedures and methods for loading and that they have updated its constitution. Residence Life has also received approval for their budget and have cut costs by $8,000.

DeGregory shared how Residence Hall Assembly has been exploring a new program for bike sharing. The assembly is not completely sure if this program would be feasible in terms of funds, or if there is a need for it on campus but they have been putting out surveys to see what the students think.

The idea would be to have bike racks where students can use their student ID to rent a bicycle for transportation around campus. The funds will be going to the assembly and the company involved. There are many options to be explored on how the renting will work, such as by year or by day. At Ohio University, rental per year for shared bikes are $75 for students, $85 for faculty, $105 for the public, and $6 per day with $3 per an additional hour.

In addition to discussions from SGA and Residence Life, a presentation was given by Camps and Conferences, which does all the summer programs on campus. They spoke of the different positions offered and the various camps that they participated in. The students involved with Camps and Conferences are given roles of Youth Counselor, Conference Assistant and Conference Hall Director which is similar to a Residence Hall Director. This summer they had about 50 students serving in these positions. Camps and Conferences do programs like Special Olympics, Fashion Camp and Gear Up. This past summer they had 11,000 guests, 80 conferences and 75,000 "bed nights," which are nights that people stayed in residence halls.

"The Board of Trustees is plugged into CMU," Mahone said. "I believe the most important thing about these conferences is to remind them of what were using this money for and who were serving. It's not only important for us to work together and be empathetic towards current students but also future Chippewas as well."