The Tartan requests $18,000 in Student Government funding
As a part of the Tartan's continuing efforts to be recognized as a serious news publication, it has recently selected several of its staffwriters as war correspondents. The decision process took the form of an involuntary nomination process followed by randomized selection, the very same system that CMU's admissions office is said to follow.
After several Tartan war correspondents were parachuted into various global conflicts, tragedy arose. The first wave was killed almost immediately by snipers, indirect artillery fire, and trench foot. Editor-in-chief Arden Ryan promised several weeks later to address the situation through the proper channels set up by Student Government.
His first step was to submit a capital funding request to the Joint Funding Committee (JFC), asking for approximately $18,000 for bulletproof vests, helmets, rugged boots, and condoms. The request was denied on a technicality, but the Student Dormitory Council (SDC) stepped up and offered funding through its supplemental funding process. Weeks later, the deal fell apart due to SDC's "$15 per student" rule, which could not cover the $3,800 arms packages which would be airdropped to each surviving Tartan journalist.
At this point, the news staff became impatient. They submitted an improved capital funding request, this time with the addition of various small arms, medical kits, and more condoms. JFC denied the request yet again, citing an obscure clause in its bylaws, preventing funding from the Student Activity Fee from being used to purchase military weaponry, unless it was for a Graduate Student Assembly (GSA) wine night.
Undeterred, news editor Holly Wang went to the office for Student Involvement and Traditions (SIT), who then referred her to the Office for Community Engagement and Leadership Development (CELD), who then referred her to VP of Student Affairs, Gina Casalegno. Gina offered several crates of unused CMUPD gear, which included heavy machine guns (HMGs), rocket launchers, class III+ body armor, gas masks, and condoms, with only one size having been used.
At this point, the airdrop crates were full and the parachutes were packed, but one detail was yet to be considered. Formerly, along with the infamous Student Life, Involvement, and Community Engagement (SLICE) vans, a fleet of cargo aircraft known as the SLICE tankers was made available to student organizations with two or more officers holding a Commercial Pilots License (CPL) with Instrument Rating (IR) and Multi-Engine Rating (MER). However, following the breakup of SLICE into SIT and CELD, the ownership of the aircraft was difficult to determine. Instead, all of the Tartan's authorized signers had to return to the certification course to actually read the rules regarding the use of student organization funds for travel purposes. They met with CELD one final time to make use of their spending office hours to charter a Luxembourgish military bomber aircraft, which should drop the crates late tomorrow afternoon.