Neil Bhandar and Alyssa Dominguez | Contributing Writers
Due to the Registered Student Organizations chronic staff shortages, student organizations struggle to host on-campus events.
The Registered Student Organization oversees all funding and marketing for all student organizations at FIU.
“Sometimes they’re not very communicative. You know, they take a while to respond to things,”said Ameilia Villa, president of Korean Culture Club. “My most recent experience with them was for our festival that got pushed forward a month due to some issues with room reservations. They said that they would work with us on that since it was the school’s fault that our event had to be moved.”
When Villa asked for RSO to approve a request for KCC’s most recent festival, they were willing to help at the beginning, but then allegedly proceeded to tell her “You know this is a one time thing, because if we do this for you then we have to do it for everyone else.”
Villa mentioned that she did not understand this response, emphasizing that it was not her fault and that RSO had offered their assistance.
“They’re sometimes very strict to the point where we have to buy things out of pocket and sometimes they don’t really check like it is very inconsistent,” said Villa.
In contrast, a different response to the questioning was provided by Giovanni “Bobbi” Merced, president of the Society of Psychedelic Science.
“Honestly they’re only strict on two things. It has to say ‘Funded by SGA’ and ‘Open to all students’. But as long as you have those two things, I swear they don’t check anything else. I have had errors on my times for a room reservation, they didn’t check it and they still confirmed my event,” said Merced.
A point made in the interview with Merced was that “the more you interact with them, the more lenient they become. Over time since I’ve had so many events they tend to accept my purchase requests and confirm my events quicker,” he said.
According to Villa and Merced, RSO allegedly presents an inconsistent level of treatment when it comes to the enforcement of their own policies based on preference, familiarity and timing.
More so, student organizations have occasionally suffered from having to pay out of pocket in order to keep events on schedule, especially when setbacks occur.
“Last year’s festival they wouldn’t let us buy some boxes for judge’s prizes because it was against policy or something, we had to buy it out of pocket,” said Villa.
While Merced did have pleasant things to say about RSO, he had a few minute complaints of his own to put forth.
“They give you the bare minimum, and you could tell they’re doing the bare minimum,” Merced said. “I’ve walked into their office and most of the time the answer is like ‘that’s not my job’, and ‘oh, I’ll pass the information to somebody else’, or ‘we’ll send you an email’… A lot of small inconveniences is how I could sum up all the processes.”
In addition, Merced mentioned a scenario in which he allegedly received preferential treatment due to the event revolving around someone FIU holds in high regard.
“I had a higher profile guy coming in, [Dr. Scott Fisher, Lead Facilitator of Segal Trials Center for Psychedelic Research], and they accepted it within a couple days. Usually it’s 14 business days. But I guess since he’s important to FIU they accepted that event quickly,” Merced said.
PantherNOW reached out to Diana Angel, who, in August of 2024, took the reins as the president of RSO.
“I think there could be a disconnect because for the E-board this year it’s just myself and my coworker, so we’re just two people,” Angel said. “It’s just the two of us. She’s the marketing director,so she’s in charge of marketing and Instagram. I’m president, so I would oversee more.”
“We could work with two people, it’s just that we only work 10 hours a week, so we have to get through those emails and phone calls or people in person within those 10 allotted hours, because we can’t work overtime… I think it could go either way, either us working more hours, or more people.”
RSO handles around 240 student organizations with only 2 employees to juggle them all within a 10 hour weekly timeframe.
Due to a shift in power, the Student Government Association now directly disperses funds to student organizations.
PantherNOW reached out to SGA’s president Francesca Casanova, as well as Kaila Jospitre, RSO’s hiring manager. At this time, they have not responded for comment.
“They’re sometimes very strict to the point where we have to buy things out of pocket and sometimes they don’t really check like it is very inconsistent,” said Villa.
About Post Author
