Students concerned with restrictions placed on the amount of scantrons and blue books that can be taken from the LSU Student Government office may have their anxieties relieved soon — and at no additional cost.
On Feb. 21 the Student Senate debated SGB4, proposed by the University Center for Freshman Year senator David Hunt, which reallocates SG funds to be used for students.
“What the bill intends to do is to shift money away from just pots of money that sits there and argues defectively into pots of money that students are actively trying to use,” SG president Zack Faircloth said.
The bill identifies the scantron and blue book program as a success. SG has purchased over 110,000 scantrons and 20,000 blue books since the fall of 2015, according to an internal audit. However, Faircloth said while the regulations on testing materials are frustrating, they are only in place to manage the SG budget.
Originally, funding for the scantron and blue book program came sporadically from the SG budget.
“It made for tough budgeting for us,” Faircloth said. “Sometimes it would come from my contingency, sometimes it would come from the executive contingency, sometimes we would have to go ask [the] Senate for the money … all that did was eat away at new initiatives we could be doing for students on campus.”
The bill proposes a new revenue stream that is built upon existing revenue, meaning students won’t see any fee increases.
The funding would come from SG’s Programming, Support and Initiatives Fund through the New Initiatives Programming Fund account. Currently, the account has about $300,000, Faircloth said.
The pre-existing fee, titled SG Programming, Support and Initiatives on students’ fee bills is a $5.50 charge. Of that charge, $0.90 goes into an account called Organizations’ Initiatives, another name for the NIPF account.
“What we’re going to do with that fee is take $0.25 to create the testing materials fund,” Faircloth said. “We’re going to take another $0.55 to put it into what’s called the [Organization Initiatives and Conference Support] account within the same PSIF organizational pot of money, but it’s a more accessible account.”
When students request money from PSIF, it mostly comes from the Organization Initiatives and Conference Support account, which only receives $0.10 of the $5.50 charged to students every semester. Reallocating the $0.55 from the NIPF account to the Organization Initiatives and Conference Support, totaling $0.65, would ensure that student organizations receive the money they request from SG, Faircloth said.
According to SG’s audit, about $0.17 per student per semester is spent on scantrons and blue books. Faircloth predicts the fee reallocation to allow for $0.25 dedicated to testing materials will allow SG to do away with regulations and have an unlimited supply of testing materials available for students at all times.
Should the bill pass through the Student Senate, a concurrent resolution will be passed to make the reallocation of a referendum to be voted on by students in the upcoming spring election.
“It’s been a mission of my staff, in particular, that we’re not going to raise student fees now,” Faircloth said. “That’s not fair to students, especially in the climate we’re in right now. We want to, instead, reevaluate where our student fees are going.”