The Student Government Senate meeting began with what Sen. Cody Wells, University Center for Freshman Year, called a “controversial” issue — positions left vacant because of the SG president’s failure to fill student appointments despite bylaws requiring the positions be filled last spring.A bill calling for $4,000 to be appropriated to Biograds to present a Biosymposium in November was referred to the Senate Committee on Finance, even though its author wanted to bring it to immediate discussion on Wednesday, said Sen. Chris Sellers, College of Arts and Sciences. Typically these funds would come from the Programming, Support, and Initiatives Fund, but the funds could not come from PSIF because SG President Stuart Watkins had not made all of his four student appointments to the PSIF committee.The committee is missing three student appointments by Watkins which must be filled before it can meet, said PSIF committee chair Phoebe Hathorn.According to the Senate bylaws, appointments for the upcoming fall and spring semesters are to be made during the spring semester.Neither the Senate nor Watkins made all the appointments required of them during the spring semester. Watkins said he didn’t make all his appointments for PSIF in the spring because he only had two applicants for the position at that time. Watkins said the application process restarted last week with three positions set to be filled soon.Watkins is making three appointments to PSIF now because one of his two appointments in the spring recently quit. “This is the exact reason students have a foul opinion of Student government as in situations like this where their needs are not taken care of efficiently or timely,” said Sen. Wells. “There is no reason we are this far in the school year and students are not getting served.”Speaker of the Senate Tyler Martin said during the spring the senate reached a consensus that they would elect people to the committee at the beginning of the fall semester.      Martin’s reasoning was because the senate had long organizational meetings and the fact that the senate makes its appointments by elections.The Senate elected its PSIF committee members during the first meeting of the semester.”Its a very unfortunate situation for this organization [applying for funds],” said Speaker Pro Tempore Brooksie Bonvillain. “[The applicants] are in a time crunch for the organization. This program is at risk of not being able to go on without outside funding because of budget cuts in the department.”Sen. Andy Palermo, University Center for Advising and Counseling, said committees missing presidential appointments is an ongoing issue for Student Government.Palermo is on the Student Tech Fee Committee and said they have not met yet because they are waiting for full student representation that they don’t have because of a missing presidential appointment.”Its definitely impeding progress,” Palermo said. “These are the big committees that allocate the most money to departments and organizations.”Watkins said he hasn’t made the tech fee committee appointment because he was informed last week student representation on the committee has been expanded meaning he needs to make six more appointments. Watkins said an e-mail advertising these positions will be sent next week.–Contact Xerxes A. Wilson at [email protected]