Author: Lilliane Ballesteros
Senators discussed ASOC Senate’s end of year budget at their meeting Wednesday, March 19. As of the meeting, the Senate had little over $600 remaining to fund clubs for the rest of the spring semester. Senators discussed several avenues for raising the Senate Discretionary Fund, including selling ASOC t-shirts and transferring funds from other budgets. With 1% of their original budget total remaining in the Senate Discretionary Fund, Junior Class Senator Mike Myers motioned to move $2,021 from ResLife Funding to the Senate Discretionary. The motion passed.
The Senate passed a proposal to fund $400 for an event the Honor Board organized for Monday, March 24 to better publicize the organization to the campus. The funds were taken from the Student Leadership Fund.
Senators also discussed the second General Assembly meeting of the semester, commenting on the proposals put forth at the meeting. In regards to the cultural grad proposal, which would institutionalize funding for cultural grads, Junior Class Senator Patrick McCredie said he thought the proposal needed to be rewritten entirely. McCredie, who introduced the proposal to the GA, said it was not unprecedented for the College to support cultural grads, saying Oxy had done so four years ago. ASOC President Bowen said Director of the Intercultural Community Center (ICC) Brandi Jones commented on the College’s support of cultural graduations, saying that “support is guaranteed.” The Senate is still discussing ways in which to support cultural graduations, as well as getting the College more involved with support.
The Senate’s Wednesday, March 5 meeting was filled with large funding requests and discussion on how to deal with future funding.
The meeting began with discussion about the Rugby Club’s attempts at selling calendars as a fundraising project. Rugby Club representative Spencer Jemelka (senior) told the Senate that the administration is not allowing the Club to sell the calendars. He cited several reasons for this, including people in the background of the photos having not signed waivers to allow their photos to be used in the calendar. The Senate voted to support the Rugby Club in their attempts to sell the Rugby calendars by whichever avenue the Club deems appropriate.
Following that, the Asian Pacific Islander Association (APIA) requested $15,000 for a large event they have scheduled in April. The algorithm suggested $3,700 for the event. APIA member Laura Knuttunen (senior) helped present the event funding request to the Senate, asking for more money. The Senate has previously made funding exceptions for large events, as in the case of Black Student Alliance’s presentation of The Cool with Lupe Fiasco. APIA representatives asked to raise the funding to $4,500, but the Senate disagreed on whether or not to raise the amount to that much. After some discussion, Senior Class Senator Ken Smutny moved to raise the funding to $4,500. The motion was seconded, but did not pass with three senators voting in favor and one senator abstaining from the vote. “Haven’t other events made the same arguments in the past and we’ve pumped it up for them?” Smutny said.
After further discussion-in which ASOC President Ryan Bowen (senior) commented on the timing of the funding request, saying it was on a first-come first-serve basis-Smutny moved to increase the funding to $4,000. Although again seconded, the motion did not pass.
Junior Class Senator Patrick McCredie called the year “unprecedented” in terms of such large funding requests. “I never anticipated that we would get such huge requests so late in the semester,” he said.
The Senate voted to approve the original algorithm funding of $3,701.71. “In terms of allocation, it’s a very generous request,” McCredie said.
Junior Class Senator Mike Myers agreed with McCredie on the unprecedented nature of large requests and said it is something the Senate “needs to work on and improve on.”
According to McCredie, the Senate Funding is split 40-60 percent with 40 percent of the budget expected to be used in the fall semester and 60 percent of the budget to be used in the spring semester.
Senate Advisor Kenna Cottrill suggested that the Senate start thinking about making more money. “It is time for Senate to do some fundraising,” she said.
General Assembly Co-Chair Noel Hollowell (sophomore) and Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz (junior) recapped the first GA meeting of the semester, which occurred on Thursday, Feb. 28. The GA Co-Chairs commented on the lack of Senators present at the meeting, saying that only five senators attended the meeting. “If we don’t show up, then we’re not legitimizing our own organizations,” Bowen said.
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