In the near future, three student sports clubs may well receive more grants for board members than all other sports clubs combined. If the University Council agrees with a proposal developed by EUR’s Executive Board, Skadi rowing club, RSRC rugby club and RSV Antibarbari football club will be seeing a fivefold increase in their allocated budget for board member grants.
Up till now, the University has awarded grants for committee members to Erasmus Sport on the basis of the number of Sport Passes sold to EUR students. Erasmus Sport proceeds to distribute these funds among the participating sports clubs. In practice however, grants for student sports clubs are far lower than those issued under the student societies scheme. Student societies already receive a 36-month reimbursement as soon as their membership passes the 100 mark.
‘Unfeasible’
Skadi in particular has repeatedly indicated that is has become ‘unfeasible’ to keep the rowing club up and running on the meagre 12-month budget presently allocated to their association. This is mainly because the club has to run its own clubhouse. And in the case of Antibarbari and RSRC, it’s much the same story.
The Executive Board has presently proposed to fund sports clubs that operate their own clubhouse according to the existing grant scheme for student societies – i.e. based on their membership. In the case of Skadi (573 members), this would increase the club’s budgeted months for committee activities from 12 to 77. RSRC’s allocation would increase from 7 to 36, and Antibarbari’s from 12 to 63. Together, the three clubs would receive funding for 176 months: a significantly higher budget than the 132 months distributed among EUR’s other student sports clubs, which lack their own clubhouse.
Questions in the University Council
The new plan has given rise to a number of questions in EUR’s University Council. For example, student representative Tim Heijkoop wondered whether other clubs wouldn’t suddenly start building their own clubhouse in order to become eligible for extra funding under the revised scheme. Moreover, some ‘roofless’ associations have more members than e.g. RSRC yet won’t be entitled to extra funding under the new plan. The Executive Board intends to take a decision on the committee budgets on 3 February. ES
