In the midst of midterms week, SG is discussing how it will continue to fund the program which allows students to receive free scantrons and bluebooks from SG’s supply.
SG President Cody Wells and the SG Senate recently discussed allocating $10,000 from the Senate Contingency Account to provide additional scantrons and bluebooks to the supply for students. Currently, the SG office is out of scantrons due to a complication in ordering the materials.
Wells said approximately 100 students come into the office each day and take multiple scantrons and bluebooks, and while students are limited to five per visit, the number of scantrons and bluebooks are flying from the office’s desk.
One thousand large scantrons cost $40 while 10,000 small scantrons cost more than $600. Though scantrons are reasonably low-priced, bluebooks are much more expensive, with 3,000 costing $2,000, he said.
According to Wells, the $10,000 he hopes to receive should last the rest of the school year and into the summer semester.
Last year, SG spent $7,600 on scantrons, which lasted through summer school.  But this year Wells said he worries that the stock won’t last through midterms and finals for both the fall and spring semesters.
“I understand this is a lot of money, but this must be spent on scantrons if SG wants to continue this initiative,” Wells said.
In addition, Wells said he wants to encourage future SG leaders to add this initiative’s expenses into the budget.
At this time, no additional money has been set aside in SG’s annual budget to fund this program. 
While the Sept. 28 discussion of taking the money from the SG Contingency Account ended in controversy, the SG Committee of Finance decided on Monday afternoon to present the option of removing the $10,000 from the SG Initiatives Account to the Senate, and Wells and the SG Senate will be meeting again tonight to discuss further options for funding.
But De Andre Beadle, senator at the University Center for Freshman Year, said the current restrictions placed on the Initiatives Account will only allow the money for scantrons and blue books to be used once.
“We want to amend the SG Constitution and Bylaws to remove the clause ‘to only fund new initiatives’ so that we can use these funds in this account to fund vital SG Programs such as ‘Blue Books and Scantrons,’ Battle of the Bands and other programming ideas that the Executive Branch plans to create,” Beadle said.
With the amount almost totaling  34 percent of the Contingency Account, Meredith Westbrook, College of Music and Dramatic Arts senator, said she would prefer if SG looked into other accounts for the money.
“We’ve never spent this much money on one thing, and we almost always zero out the entire account without spending $10,000 on scantrons,” she said.
According to Westbrook, this account is typically used to help send students and groups to conferences and other nationally recognized events. One such program SG’s contingency fund was used for was the Going Global program, which helps students find jobs and internships around the world while also bringing international students to Baton Rouge.
 
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Contact Kate Mabry at [email protected]