Student Government is making positive steps in restructuring how it funds student groups.

Students were out of luck in February after the Senate’s Appropriations and Revenue Committee gave out the last of the $70,000 it budgeted for student groups. It’s encouraging to see SG acknowledge the problem and work to fix it before the end of this school year.

The new legislation makes two changes in how groups are funded, the Kernel reported Thursday. The first is that club sports could only apply for a maximum grant of $500, down from $1,000 this year. The maximum amount of money available for General Funding Grants remained at $500, and College Student Council Grants and Service Grants remained at $1,000.

The other change is that student groups can only receive SG funding once a year now; under the previous rules, they could be awarded money multiple times.

Although these changes limit the amount of money being given to some groups, they are necessary to ensure that SG can fund more student efforts throughout the year. It should benefit more students and increase the work SG can support in the student community.

Some senators thought there should be more flexibility in this regulation and a section was added to the legislation that allowed the A&R Committee members to approve multiple funding requests in special circumstances at their own discretion.

Some groups — and the campus in return — would benefit from multiple allocations, but it is important for senators to use conservative discretion when considering these possibilities. The new changes won’t mean much or help solve the funding problem if the process regresses to the old way of things.

Overall, discretion is one of the simplest and possibly most effective solutions to ensure that more student groups receive funding. It seems SG members are aware of this with comments in Thursday’s article, but it is worth repeating that these new regulations will help no one if committee members don’t evaluate each application for funding seriously.

But if the pieces fall into place, the chance of future funding problems should most definitely be lessened and possibly eliminated.