Budget cuts and a transitional period in the Student Government Senate made for a choppy pace in SG this semester as leadership often had to focus its efforts on unforeseen issues.
SG President J Hudson and Vice President Dani Borel ran on a pledge to complete 32 initiatives but were immediately confronted with the University’s budget issues upon arriving in office and have only finished nine so far.
The completed initiatives include the placement of a Redbox kiosk on campus, increased seating in the Student Union and reforming towing on the Fridays before football games.
Hudson described 12 initiatives as “in progress” and 11 as “to-do.” These initiatives include extending library hours, establishing covered bus stops and putting recycling bins in every classroom.
“We knew that [budget cuts] would be a big issue, but I don’t think we knew it would be such a big issue and that we would be so involved in it,” Borel said.
As a result, SG spent much of its fall semester representing the students in interactions with elected officials and encouraging student involvement in the fight to maintain the University’s academic core, which Hudson said is more important than some of the smaller issue initiatives they ran on.
Hudson made national news when a letter he wrote to Gov. Bobby Jindal criticizing his long out-of-state trips got published in a newspaper in New Hampshire where Jindal was fundraising.
Though Hudson says the attention the letter got was not planned, Hudson and Borel used the event as a catalyst to launch a SG letter-writing campaign and later were founding members of the student group Flagship Advocates, which has placed a focus on letter writing.
The pair later met face-to-face with Jindal and Chancellor Michael Martin and hand-delivered 700 letters, though Hudson said the meeting didn’t resolve much. Hudson said it would take much more than 700 letters to save the University from its budget crisis.
The executives also went to the Board of Supervisors’ midyear budget cut emergency meeting with more than 20 other students to speak out against the budget reduction. However, the cut $5.1 million cut was passed.
Hudson and Borel pledged to keep budget cuts as their top priority heading into next semester.
“We realize that this is no longer, ‘Oh, this a budget cut we can absorb,'” Hudson said. “I hope people realize the hours we’ve put in, the trips we’ve been on, the sleep we’ve lost.”
The Senate passed a resolution urging the Faculty Senate to endorse SG’s proposal to extend the date a student can withdraw from class without receiving a “W.” The proposal extends the date from the sixth class day of the semester to the eighth, which is the last day a student can add a class.
The Senate also voted to provide a maximum of $16,000 for the establishment of new service-learning courses. The money, combined with funds remaining from an allocation made in May, will allow the Center for Community Engagement, Learning and Leadership to bring service-learning courses to many majors, including psychology, mechanical engineering and finance, according to Marybeth Lima, CCELL director.
The Senate did not hesitate to disagree with Hudson and Borel, who ran on a different election ticket than most of the senators. The Senate overrode two Hudson vetoes.
The first veto was of a resolution the Senate passed to request all metered parking spaces on campus only be enforced during normal parking regulation hours, 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Currently, visitor parking space meters are enforced until 10 p.m.
The other veto was used on a bill to change the SG Election Code that will allow campaigns to give out items less than $2 in value. Hudson vetoed the bill because he is afraid that students will place their vote based on the best “trinket” they get, or that campaigns will abuse the rule and purchase items like condoms and shot glasses.
SG Senate Speaker Brooksie Bonvillain said the bill was passed to give SG campaigns more creativity and increase voter turnout.
 
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Contact Frederick Holl at [email protected]