The Student Senate passed a bill Wednesday night that will moreevenly divide money for college councils.
After intense debate at last week’s Senate meeting and inTuesday night’s Rules Committee session, the Senate unanimouslypassed the heavily-amended bill that changes the way StudentGovernment allocates funding to college councils.
“We’ve finally come to a solution that solves everybody’sproblem,” Sen. Benjamin Caire said after the debate.
Under the previous system, college councils received fundingbased on each college’s population. Smaller colleges, such as Musicand Dramatic Arts, receive about $200 per year, and largercolleges, such as University College for Freshman Year, receiveabout $4,000 per year.
Every year, college councils receive 15 percent of the SGoperations fee students pay each semester.
Speaker Pro-tempore Theresa Lobianco told the Senate that thebill changes the policy by giving each college a base amount ofabout $500 per year, then dividing the rest of the 15 percent basedon college population.
The bill also changes the procedure to access a collegecouncil’s unused money and establishes the College CouncilAppropriations Committee.
If a council does not use its allocated funding, the money willroll over into their account for the next year. But after twoyears, if the money still is unused, it will go into a SG generalcontingency account monitored by the CCAC.
Then during the year, councils can go to CCAC for additionalfunding for special projects or programs.
Sen. Brian Drake of the College of Music and Dramatic Artshelped lead the fight to get smaller councils more money because hesaid the M&DA council could do almost nothing with the smallamount they received in the past.
Drake said last year the council organized a barbecue outsidethe School of Music for the students and staff, but the council hadto find an outside donor to fund the $600 event.
“Now, we’re getting almost triple what we got,” Drake said.”We’re going to have a lot more to work with this year.”
Drake also said he thinks the idea of putting the rollover moneyinto one account is useful.
“Even if you have a council that’s inactive, the next yearanother college can apply for it,” Drake said.
Mass communication Sen. Bryan Jones said the Manship School ofMass Communication faced a similar situation because of minimalfunding.
Jones said inactive councils have been a problem in SG, but notbecause the councils do not want to be active.
“They don’t have the money,” Jones said. “We really couldn’t doanything with the $300 we received.”
But, several other senators expressed concern during the debatebecause the new bill will give more money to councils that do notdo anything with the funding, such as the School of VeterinaryMedicine and the Graduate School.
But, Jones said although those councils probably do not havetime to be involved because of strenuous class schedules, SG cannottake away their funding.
“Because they’re official schools under the University, youcan’t discriminate,” Jones said. “In the future, they may want tobecome active.”
Jones said SG cannot exclude them, but with the new legislation,other councils can apply for the money.