Brandeis' bid to host the 16 annual National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness (NSCAHH) Conference was rejected. Instead the conference concluded Sunday at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. According to Union Treasurer Andrei Khots '05, Brandeis' bid of $5,945.17 was not enough. Khots said that he received confirmation from Paul Adler '04 that the conference was not going to occur and that the money could go back to Union Senate.

$5,000.17 has been returned Student Senate Discretionary fund and $945 to Executive Board (E-board) Project Support Fund. The senate discretionary, which is usually $10,000 per semester, received a 50% boost. The funds were returned to the senate at an earlier Senate meeting this semester.

Previous Justice articles and former Union President Ben Brandzel '03 reported that there was a total of about $6,750 allocated to the conference,

But due to the vague nature of the senate resolution which called for all "remaining" funds to be allocated at the end of the semester, until Khots confirmed the figures in an email to the Justice, it has not been clear how much was actually allocated.

Union President Josh Brandfon '05 in Jan., when he was treasurer, told the Justice that there was approximately $6,200 allocated from the senate and about $1,000 from the E-board.

In the Spring of 2002. after originally allocating funds to the 15 annual conference in the Spring, the senate then reallocated the funds to the 16 in the fall after failing to meet requirements for the 15.

Union Advocate, at that time, Josh Sugarman '05 filed a Union Judiciary(UJ) case to challenge the validity of reclaiming money allocated the previous year since previously the money would just be placed into a rollover account. Another question that arose is whether the senate has the right to reclaim funds that were not originally theirs.

Sugarman told the Justice at that time "That (senate) action was in violation of the Student Union Constitution. This UJ case is in an effort to ensure that the individual branches of the student government are held accountable for their actions under our Constitution," Sugarman told the Justice.

The following week, the Senate and the parties to the UJ case reached a compromise to write a temporary by-law dealing with rollover and return $6,750 to the Union Senate. Soon after, the Senate passed a resolution to reallocate the money to bid for the 16 annual NSCAHH conference.

In January some concerns by the Brandeis administration surfaced about whether the conference is logistically possible.

One of the concerns was whether the Union allocated is not enough to cover security, bussing, food, housing and custodial services for the conference. Other concerns that Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Jean Eddy said the administration was concerned with the "idea" of putting additional 500 students who are attending the conference in the residence halls and what that means as far as bathrooms, noise levels.

In a letter responding to the Justice Adler addressed some of the administrators concerns.

"No students from other schools will be housed on campus. There will be no drain on dorm facilities. Concerns about this raised in the article were simply unfounded," Adler said.

"Our desire to host this conference is rooted in a firm belief that this will enrich the Brandeis experience," Adler wrote in that letter.

Since then there has been no further communication from anyone in Union government about Brandeis' bid, until the Justice inquired about a month ago.

Brandzel told the Justice last year that if Brandeis fails in its bid, it will no try again.