Students and faculty who attended last Monday’s social media forum were interrupted in the lecture by the sound of Simpson’s homecoming kickoff.

Fireworks were sponsored by the Campus Activities Board (CAB) to begin the week’s festivities, but those sitting in McNeill Hall for the lecture started tweeting complaints of the noise- and possibly the cost.

“Glad to know where my tuition dollars went…Fireworks interrupting our social media forum #SCsocialmedia” one attendee posted, using the forum’s Twitter hash tag that speaker Nathan Wright created for the event.

“There were a handful of concerns were they thought the money was coming from college money and it really wasn’t coming from there,” Assistant Dean of Students Rich Ramos said.

According to Ramos, the money for the fireworks came from student funds and Student Government Association (SGA).

“Every full-time student pays a student activities fee and that money goes to SGA so when you read in the minutes about SGA funding a group, that’s student activities fees, so Religious Life gets money, EAC (Environmental Awareness Club) gets money, CAB gets money, Intramurals gets money,” Ramos said.

“You have to submit a budget request specifying where that money goes towards. You can’t just say ‘I want $5,000.’ It has to be a legit request,” senior Autumn Girres said.

As for the scheduling conflict, Ramos said the kickoff has been on the same Monday for 20 years.

“We haven’t changed the time, we haven’t changed the day of the week, and it’s always been on that Monday,” Ramos said. “The only difference is that there were fireworks this year as opposed to a bonfire. We had fireworks last year to start the year out. The realities are even if it interfered in the life of a college there is no way to plan an event that’s going to be not opposing some other event.”