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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Liz Coffey, sophomore earth science major, and Jonathan Krueger, junior political science major, are congratulated Wednesday evening in the Memorial Union after winning the 2009 ASG presidential and vice presidential election. Kruger and Coffey won by margin of 89 votes. Kellen Jenkins/The Bulletin.

With a difference of 89 votes, Jonathan Krueger, junior political science major, and Liz Coffey, sophomore earth science major, were elected 2009 president and vice president of Associated Student Government, with a vote total of 497-408.

“I’m excited,” Krueger said. “It was a well run race and we’re certainly excited to see a good turnout.”

Both Krueger and Coffey said they were ready to put their campaign promises into action.

“I really just want to get everything started now,” Coffey said. “I’m going to call my mom in a few seconds.”

Voting started at 8 a.m. Monday and ended at 4 p.m. yesterday. The turnout, which was about 21 percent of the student population, doubled from last year.

“We didn’t reach the 25 percent (that we had made as a goal at the beginning of the election) but we got 20,” said Shaunquez Powell, junior crime and delinquency studies major and election commissioner for ASG.

Powell said that more people voted for Krueger and Coffey alone than those who voted last year.

“We saw how big an impact the union campaign made on voting,” Krueger said. “Over 800 people voting is phenomenal. If we can get out and reach students in that way, I think we can have a successful year.”

Only 488 people voted last year. A total of 920 ballots were cast this week.

“It seemed like a lot of people actually voted this year,” said Eric Swanson, junior secondary math education major. “In the past, I don’t think there has been quite as many votes.”

Swanson drew on personal experiences to help him cast his vote.

“I’ve known Jonathan for about three years now,” Swanson said. “I know that he is a great leader. I’ve seen what he’s done in organizations around campus. I have a really good feeling about what is going to happen for the school.”

The new administration will start its term on May 17, said Bryce Cooke, freshman secondary social science education major and executive assistant to ASG. They will be active throughout the summer but will officially start in August.

A total of 12 ASG senators were reelected. One senator representing the School of Business, five senators representing the college of liberal arts and sciences and six senators representing the teacher’s college were chosen.

Any write in candidates that did not receive 10 percent of votes were not reported in the election results.

Mary Shivley, coordinator for the center for student involvement, began counting and verifying the ballots as soon as the election ended. Powell showed up at about 5 p.m. to help.

“The system that we use does calculate the votes but then the election commissioner and I, we go in and verify the results to make sure that every thing is correct and current,” Shivley said.

Shivley and Powell cross-checked each vote to make sure that every person only cast one ballot.

“The system is pretty flawless, but we go through and look at every single vote that is cast and make sure that no person voted twice,” Shivley said. “The system pretty much regulates that, but we also regulate that by hand.”

However, the new system initially did not allow some a few hundred students to vote, as emails containing the ballots were not sent to those students’ addresses.

Paper ballots were made available on Wednesday for students who had not received the email to vote, said Sarah Schulte, senior microbial and cellular biology major and current ASG vice president.

Schulte also said that Shivley and Powell would have some extra work to do because of the paper ballots because they had to be counted by hand and added to the total.

“We haven’t done (the voting) with this system,” Shivley said. “If it does show the results, that I could see how you voted, the only people that would be able to see that information is myself and the election commissioner.”

However, Shivley and Powell will have to make sure that students did not vote more than once, either online or with a paper ballot.

But with the voting complete, Krueger has high hopes for his upcoming term as president of ASG.

“The main differences in how our administration is looking to running ASG in this next year will involve us getting out of the office, all of the time,” Krueger. “I’d like to say thanks for giving us the chance. We won’t disappoint you.”

Ashley Peaches/The Bulletin

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Michelle McHenry, senior integrated studies major and senator at large, asks for clarification before a vote as Whitney Coleman, sophomore psychology major, listens Thursday afternoon in the Memorial Union Kanza Room. ASG met to discuss the possibility of raising of student fees to offset the cost of the Memorial Union renovations and upcoming ASG elections.

Emporia State’s Associated Student Government met last Thursday to discuss plans to raise student fees to offset costs associated with the renovation of the Memorial Union. Students will have the opportunity to vote on a prospective fee increase before one can be instituted.

With this in mind, ASG voted to change election dates for this year to April 6, 7 and 8 instead of traditional post Spring Break elections.

“It’s not required, but we figured the turn out would be better if (the election and the referendum vote) were on the same day,” said Angela Blaufuss, senior crime and delinquency studies major and ASG president. “We really just wanted students to have a chance to keep putting in their input. We don’t want students voting on something that they don’t want.”

Election date changes will apply to this year only and will also give ASG candidates extra time to campaign.

To make sure that students understand what they are voting for, Blaufuss said she hopes to do an educational program for students living in the residence halls. Blaufuss concentrated on freshman students, not only because the increase would affect them for the longest period of time, but also because they will be at ESU long enough to experience the completed renovations.

“We want to do some kind of program for students to realize what the elections are about, what the student fee is about, what the renovations are all about and how it’s going to work,” Blaufuss said. “A lot of students can go to these things and still not understand what it is. Since they’ll be here for those four years, by the time that they graduate, the renovations will be done.”

ASG also discussed plans to lobby the Kansas legislature to protect funding for higher education on behalf of ESU and other Regents universities as a part of Higher Education Day.

“Higher Education Day is a concentrated lobbying effort on behalf of the six Regents institutions and community colleges and technical colleges in the state,” said Jonathan Krueger, junior political science major and ASG legislative director. “We spend one day out of the legislative session arguing on behalf of higher education.”

A large part of showing the state that higher education is important to many people is the ability to fill a room with people who are concerned about the issue.

“We take students up there to show legislators what benefit we provide to the state of Kansas and we urge them to consider higher education when they are making their budget decisions and decisions on bills and resolutions that might affect us,” Krueger said.

Krueger claims that the number of students that are enrolled in higher education is such a significant number that it only benefits Kansas to support higher education.

“This year, we’re hoping to show our legislatures the positive affect that students from Kansas have on the economy after they graduate,” Krueger said. “The shear number of students enrolled in the state is astronomical. In this difficult era of budget cuts, we have already been cut deep enough.”

At the meeting, ASG also announced and inducted three new members to the student senate.

Whitney Coleman, sophomore psychology major, and Katie Farnsworth, freshman elementary education major, were inducted to the student senate as representatives of the Teachers College. Caroline Ewing, freshman secondary education major, was inducted as an at-large senate member.

There are seven empty senate seats in ASG that students can apply for in the Center for Student Involvement. Six of the seats are for representatives of the Business College and the final seat is in the graduate department.

“If business students are not wanting to fill those seats, we can put in someone (at-large) who wants to be in ASG and be the voice of the students,” said Sarah Schulte, senior microbial and cellular biology major and ASG vice president. “We prefer business majors because we want to have that college represented, but if we can’t get business majors then we’ll take at-large students who technically represent the entire university.”

In addition, applications for this year’s educational opportunity grant are also available in the CSI office. Completed applications are due Feb. 23.

“They are need-based or academic (scholarships) and we give them to single parents also,” Schulte said.

ASG usually gives out about 25-30 scholarships for approximately $250 each.

“We try to give out as many as we can,” Schulte said.

The money is taken from the Educational Opportunity Fund that students contribute to as part of student fees. Each student pays $5 to the fund each semester.

Ashley Peaches/The Bulletin

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