“Is now an appropriate time?” Many senators asked this of group representatives whose requests for increases in funding for their organizations were heard at the Associated Student Government meeting last Thursday.

After much debate, all three of the requested line item increases were passed, which will add a total of $5.43 for full time students and $0.56 for part time students to student fees starting next semester.

Jonathan Rivers, chair of the fiscal affairs committee and junior secondary social sciences education major, said that despite economic hard times, senate voted in favor of the organizations, all were publications, because of what they heard from their constituents.

“Even though our economy is tough right now, some services are indispensable,” Rivers said. “One of those, I think Emporia State students felt was the press, and they stood behind that.”

Ali Jordan, junior secondary English education major and President of Quivira, ESU’s literary magazine, requested an increase in hopes to gain more funding for conferences, speakers and to expand the magazine.

“The journal right now, the printing costs are increasing for us,” Jordan said. “We’ve only been able to print 150 journals a year. We’d like to have more pages in them, just because we’d like to be able to print more of the submissions we get.”

Printing costs were also a concern with the other publications. The Bulletin’s printing costs doubled this year, which, according to Kelsey Ryan, Editor-In-Chief and junior political science major, is why it is distributed once weekly, verses twice a week as in the past.

She said that other measures have also been taken to remain fiscally responsible.

“We will not be doing a Bullshit edition this year, that is one way we are trying to be fiscally responsible as far as printing costs go,” Ryan said. “And Clint (Gorton) has been doing an excellent job as our advertising manager – his collection rate is up to 94 percent. That is, as far as I know, the highest it’s ever been in the history of the paper, at least as far back as anyone can remember.”

An increase was still necessary to bring employee salaries to what they had been before a 30 percent cut three years ago, which will help with staff retention and equalization with other on campus jobs, Ryan said.

Lindsey Gentry, editor of The Sunflower and senior business major, noted similar reasons for requesting an increase.

“These increases will go towards printing as well as salaries,” Gentry said. “Last year, our funding was cut in half and so we’re trying to bring it back up to where it was.”

Next Thursday, ASG will host representatives of over 60 Recognized Student Organizations at its meeting where SB09055, a bill concerning RSO allocations for fiscal year 2011 will be debated. When passed, the allocations will also contribute to student fees.

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Requested line item increases to student fees were introduced in the first readings at the Associated Student Government meeting last Thursday.

“We’re dealing with the student fees directly,” said Jonathan Rivers, chair of the Fiscal Affairs Committee and junior secondary social sciences education major. “So any increase or decrease directly affects everyone, so we’re really trying to take this as seriously and as professionally as possible and we try to find a mutually beneficial situation for all the groups involved because in actuality we don’t want to cut anybody, but if we feel that there’s waste being done or that groups are not being responsible with their money then we’ll make the appropriate decisions.”

The recommended increases by the Fiscal Affairs Committee were an increase for Quivira of 45 cents to 70 cents per full time student while the part time fee of $0.25 will remain unchanged and an increase for The Bulletin of $1.02 to $9.12 per full time student and of 14 cents to $1.29 per part time student. The only other line item increase to be considered is for The Sunflower, but more information was necessary before an amount, if any, could be recommended.

“These are all just recommendations from my committee, I would encourage all of you to talk to your constituents ask them questions, ask them how they feel about these recommendations that we made, because these directly affect their student fees,” Rivers said to the senate.

The line items will be discussed and debated at the next ASG meeting at 5 p.m. on March 25 in the Heritage Room of the Memorial Union.

ASG elections were also discussed at last week’s meeting. Any full time student with a Grade Point Average of 2.0 is eligible to run for Senate. ASG can hold up to 27 senators, including: two graduate students, two students who are undeclared majors, two students from the School of Library and Information Management, seven students from the School of Business, seven students from the Teachers College and seven from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Students who currently serve on the senate must be reelected in order to continue in their position, and all students running for senate must either get 50 signatures from students in their respective college on a petition or pay a $30 buy-out. Applications and petitions for Senate are due to the Lauren Leif, election commissioner and junior political science major, by March 29.

Leif said this year’s goal is a more competitive senate race.

“It would be wonderful if we had more competition,” Leif said. “But in the past years there hasn’t been as much competition and that would be an amazing thing to have. We’re still looking for people to run for Senate or Vice President or President if they’re interested.”

Students who wish to run for President or Vice President must have a GPA of 2.5 or better. Jonathan Krueger, current ASG President and senior political science major, said staying positive is the best way to be successful in the presidential position.

“I think the biggest advice I can give is just to stay positive,” Krueger said. “There’s a lot of differing opinions, but in the end I think everybody is trying to accomplish the same thing, and at the end of the day, the bottom line is you have to stay positive about your goals and even the goals of the opponent that you’re running against.”

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