The Student Government meeting on October 15th was marked by yet another failure of the proposed increase to the Student Activities and Media fund. The proposed resolution would increase desperately needed funds to the 7 major organizations, including the Student Activities Board, Judiciary Board, Intergreek Council, President’s Council, WLSO, the Compass, And Student Government itself. The SAM fund pays for all the student activities, as well as the wages of student employees of these organizations. The SAM has not been changed to reflect inflation, or the changes in minimum wage, leading to less and less working capital being made available to the organizations. Many organizations, such as the Student Activities board, has had to either cut down on events or go into massive debt. The student government, however, cannot seem to agree on the specifics of an increase.

A constitutional amendment to modify the allocation of the SAM fee was also tabled, after a disagreement of the specific numbers in the allocation. Modifications were made, but any change in an amendment necessitates tabling any proposed amendment for two weeks. The amendment was reluctantly tabled after a point of order was called from the audience.  

The resolution that failed on the 15th was set to fix the SAM fee at 51 dollars. The previous resolution was set at 50 dollars but due to bylaws the same resolution cannot be reintroduced and so it must be changed before it can be considered again. The resolution needed 8 votes to pass, a 2/3 majority, but only received 7. The chair, Joseph Cantwell, voted to break the tie, but due to bylaws, it raised the number of voting parties, making his vote unable to tip the balance. The resolution failed to pass by 1 vote.

The meeting was dismissed and adjourned to the SG office in the basement for heated discussion amongst the members. Tempers flared as the Student Government tried to figure out what went wrong, and those that support the resolutions discussed the reservations with those that voted nay. Brian Springett, the Student Government member that introduced the resolution, had this to say about the situation: “From the start, we weren’t sitting down together, working things out, and figuring out why we are doing this. Thats the biggest thing we’re running into, communication issues, we’re not agreeing with each other. The executive board can’t even sit down and sanely come to a conclusion of what we need to do. I think thats our biggest problem, and it was a little shaky, with the 50 to 51, and that was more, again, another failure... I think, because of our mistakes, we are in this situation currently. So basically it was communication,  and working things out together, we need to just sit down and do it. You know, get to a point  where we all understand where we’re going, what we’re doing, and why we are doing it.”

One hopes the Student government will reach agreement on an increase to the SAM fee before the student organizations are forced by debt to cut back on their operations.

Be first to comment this article

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.6
AkoComment © Copyright 2004 by Arthur Konze - www.mamboportal.com
All right reserved