Funding

The large cost of the Orange and Black Ball — an event that was resurrected in November after a four-decade hiatus — is causing a ripple effect throughout the organizations that fund student groups, ultimately meaning that less funding is available for other events.

When professor emeritus of Romance languages and literatures Alfred Foulet GS ’27 donated a gift in the name of Fulton McMahon, Class of 1884, he intended for the gift to be spent covering travel expenses for graduate students. The fund, established in the 1980s, would be reserved for research abroad in what was then called the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

Now, the University is legally seeking to expand the parameters of the Fulton McMahon Research Fund, broaden the scope of who can benefit from the yearly income. The process of expanding the purview of the donation highlights the complicated issues involved when yearly funding exceeds the enumerated need on the campus.

In the past two years, I have raised funds extensively for both cultural events and to set up a club sport. My personal experience has suggested that finding cash for cultural events is easier than finding resources to buy sports equipment. This bias raises interesting questions about event funding on campus.

While sources for funding are plenty, information about them is decentralized and non-standardized. Often, details and requirements for various grants, awards and opportunities are only spread by word of mouth. Other times they are unclear, not completely transparent or vary greatly across departments.

Proposed congressional cuts to research funding could result in layoffs of a third of the staff and researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, threatening the country’s leadership in the development of fusion energy, the lab’s top officials said in interviews.