With a unanimous vote, Associated Student Government passed SB 09033, a bill revising the Senate Finance Policy in its meeting Thursday. The bill was originated by ASG President Jonathan Krueger, senior political science major and Whitney McGinnis, graduate assistant for ASG, in July, and addresses both major and minor changes to the policy.
“Probably the last time the document went through an exhaustive overhaul was close to 10 years ago,” Krueger said. “Usually we just go along and make changes as we need them, but after a while you find that you need to make a lot of big changes. We felt that at this point we had the right climate to make those changes.”
The Senate Finance Policy mandates how student activity fee dollars are spent. Undergraduate students with 10 or more credit hours and graduate students with seven or more credit hours pay a semester fee of $474 in their tuition towards these funds. Students taking fewer credit hours than that pay $58 per credit hour each semester.
The money goes toward things like student union refurbishing and operating, the student health center, sports clubs, ASG, etc. and can also be allocated by ASG to Recognized Student Organizations.
The biggest revision to the policy was an addition in Article II which addresses the reconsideration of allocating funds to recognized student organizations.
“The main reason for adding a reconsideration process is that currently under our policy, if an organization is dissatisfied with their funding request that they were given or not given, they have no way of challenging that,” Krueger said.
Another revision was made to Article II to include consideration of funding for events that are bipartisan or acknowledge both sides of an issue, whereas before, any religious, political, or event of that sort would not be funded.
“If it’s a bipartisan event or if it’s another event sponsored by a group, if there’s equal opportunities for both parties or for all candidates, then that will be something that can be funded,” McGinnis said. “But to fund strictly one political outlook or one religious outlook, we can’t do that.”
A small change to the policy included making wording consistent throughout the policy. Now, within the policy, recognized student organizations will all be referred to as RSOs.
“(We changed the wording ) just so that it’s all uniform,” McGinnis said. “So that we don’t have RSO or recognized organization or organization. It’s just all one term.”
Senator Anna Altwies, secondary education English major, sparked discussions to clarify meaning within the text and also suggested minor changes, mainly in format.
“ASG is really trying to make sure that we are being as thorough as we can be, because it’s not just some paper that ASG is passing around that only ASG is going to see,” Altwies said. “It’s something that represents the university.”
Sarah Shaw/The Bulletin
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