After this year, the Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, formerly the Office of Undergraduate Enrichment, will not allow Digital Media Practices students’ capstone projects to qualify for the grants program. Until last fall, DMP students could apply for up to $1,000 from URAF for their final capstone projects, which are required to graduate with the major. 

DMP students spend their final two semesters writing, shooting and producing their capstone, which culminates with a screening at the Britannia Theatre. Casey Beck, program director for DMP, said most students chose to make narrative projects, but they can choose between game design, podcasting or filmmaking. 

Beck said the change to grant eligibility will add to the stress of the project and exacerbate inequality within the program and filmmaking, as students will be responsible for sourcing their own funding without support from URAF.

“Making a film, as for a capstone project, is an incredibly stressful process,” Beck said. “It is very intense emotionally and intellectually and financially … I know [the change] will cause undue stress for our students moving forward.” 

URAF grants are meant to support independent academic experiences that are not credit-bearing and do not fall within another obvious funding stream, according to Michael Brumbaugh, associate dean of college curriculum and policy for Newcomb-Tulane College. He said the increased popularity of the grant program has forced URAF to make “hard choices” about how to distribute the limited funding. 

“In the case of DMP capstones, we recognized that we had a sizeable number of solid proposals that were unfortunately not well aligned with the scope of the Grants Program because they were part of a curricular requirement,” Brumbaugh said in an email to The Hullabaloo. 

The majority of the funding for the URAF grant program comes from endowed funds — grants Tulane has received from external sources — and revenues from other universities for services Tulane provides them, according to Brumbaugh. This funding is supplemented with funds from the Newcomb-Tulane College budget. 

The annual budget for URAF grants is around $100,000, depending on funding streams. In recent years, URAF has been able to fund around 110 to 120 proposals, about half of the applications they receive. 

Without the potential for URAF grants, most DMP students turn to GoFundMe or alternative crowdsourcing websites to make their projects a reality. Beck notes that working filmmakers would rarely, if ever, have to source funding at the same time as producing their films. The funding restrictions may cause students to scale down on their projects, cut actors or find other ways to cut costs. 

Junior Cameron Brown is part of the last cohort of DMP students that will be eligible to apply for grants from URAF. To execute his vision, he will need up to $3,000 in funding for his capstone. The project is more than a final exam to Brown: He said he hopes to use it in his portfolio to apply to film school, submit it to festivals and tell an important queer story in the current political moment. 

“This film, for me, is a combination of professional advancement [and] personal catharsis,” Brown said. “It feels like us as individuals, especially young college students, like we can’t really do anything. For me, this is my way of doing something with the anger that I feel.”

According to Edith Wolfe, associate director of URAF, the criteria for grant eligibility did not change after the restructuring of OAE to URAF. After students submit applications, URAF determines whether they meet eligibility as stated on the URAF website before sending it to a selection committee of faculty for final evaluation and decision. 

Fundraising for independent films is an important part of the production process and a lesson for DMP majors, but Beck said ideally the capstone projects are “the last year that [students] feel fully supported … not the first year where [students are] having to learn the hard lessons.” 

“It’s painful to watch students who [Tulane] should be supporting and trying to create an environment where they can make the best film possible, maybe the last film where they are fully supported,” Beck said. 

Beck said her department is doing everything in their power to fill the gap in funding for students, but the department is already limited. Seven students completed capstones in the fall and 17 are currently in progress.