Hey Josh, I feel your pain.
When I was an undergrad, I was the president of a departmental student society for my major. The college which oversaw my major gives out grants to the student societies. These grants are decided upon by the college's student committee which is made up of the two Associated Students senators for my college and one representative from each of the clubs.
Yes, our group had a rep on the board and he attended the meetings and reported back to us regularly. He passed along the information to me based on what they were told at the meeting. I simply had to show up on a certain day, bring a print out of our proposal and make a 5 minute speech explaining why we needed/wanted the money.
We didn't ask for much, it was something like $500 out of a $30,000 club grant budget they had.
I showed up on time, was dressed nice and had prepared a speech of sorts to explain our request. The other groups that went up before me were asking for like $1000+.
When it was my turn, I get up there and the first thing this guy, who wasn't even from my college (he was a senator-at-large who apparanetly decided to just drop in for the meeting), tells me "You can go ahead and hand out your proposal." So, I handed my extra copy to the chairwoman. He gave me a rude stare and said, "Don't you have more copies?" I replied, "Oh...I was told I only needed bring one extra." He retorted, "You're supposed to have twelve." I looked over at my rep and he gave me a confused look as if this was all news to him.
This senator-at-large made me leave, find the nearest copy machine, and make another 11 copies!
When I got back, I went ahead and decided to present. We asked for like $200 for 2 guest speakers, $200 for flyers/advertising and $100 for our faculty mixer. I'm tellin' ya, they totally gave me the third degree! They were like, $200 for the speakers? Are you flying them in or something? Who are these guest speakers? Why are they so special?
They didn't grill the other presenters about their requests which were three times as much ours!
Surprise, surprise, they didn't award us the money.
I asked our rep afterward and he said that he has no idea why that guy was so cranky with me and added that they did not discuss in any previous meetings that 12 copies of the proposal were needed.
FYI - I didn't have to fill out any forms, so it's not like I didn't read the instructions or something. Plus, they never gave out any guideline sheets for how to make the proposal.
Now that I think about it, that senator-at-large was a big wig in his fraternity and my friend, our club rep, was one of the guys who was starting up a Sigma Nu colony. So maybe that guy was just hatin' on our group because my friend. Who knows?
Anyway, Josh, what your council did was so uncool. I believe that e-mails or paper memos should have gone out to inform everyone of when the interviews are. Try again next year and really hit 'em up then!
.....Kelly