UPDATED: Oct. 18, 2011, 10:15 a.m.

CORRECTION: In the print version of this article, the amount of money University Union was awarded was misstated in the headline. UU received $1 million.

After more than an hour of debate, the Student Association passed a controversial bill, the Designation of Surplus Funding, at Monday night’s meeting. The bill proposed that SA award University Union with $1 million in the next five years.

The bill was passed with a vote of 45 to 10 at the meeting held at 7:30 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium.

Neal Casey and Jeff Rickert, SA president and comptroller, respectively, presented the bill. The bill stated that SA received approximately $1.42 million in excess student fee funds from the Syracuse University Division of Student Affairs. This was brought to the attention of Casey and Rickert last spring, but the general assembly learned about it for the first time at the meeting.

The money accumulated from excess rollover funds, usually put back into the general SA pot to be distributed for programming, was instead put in a separate account during the last several years.

The reason for this separate account, its accumulation and the failure to bring its existence to the attention of SA is unclear. The university has not provided any answers to either Casey or Rickert, they said.

Casey and Rickert designed the bill to give most of the money to University Union. They said this was because most of the rollover money was raised from UU events that the organization put into their miscellaneous account, which was then put into this separate account.

More importantly, Rickert said he and Casey thought UU was the best place for a large sum of money because it is the best way to reach the most students and because UU is the Official Programming Board.

The bill, which went into effect as it was passed, immediately gave UU approximately $500,000 to put toward a large-scale event, Rickert said. The second $500,000 will be given to the organization based on the revenue from an event occurring between spring 2012 and fall 2013.

If UU raises less than $250,000, the organization will not receive any additional funds, Rickert said. SA will release an additional $250,000 to UU if it raises between $250,000 and approximately $499,999.99 at this event, and SA will release the entire existing $500,000 if UU raises at least $500,000 or more, Rickert said.

Rob Dekker, UU president, said he was approached about the possibility of the bill last May and had known about the bill’s current stipulations for about a week.

‘Tonight was a big win for programming on campus; it’s a huge step forward for us and our ability to really engage the student body and put together more large-scale, frequent events,’ Casey said in an interview after the meeting.

The excess $422,000 will be put into the general SA student activity pot from which all student groups can apply to be granted funds, Rickert said. This will not be put into the account all at once; rather, the money will be dispersed over the next five years by allotting an additional $42,000 to the general budget during the next ten semesters.

Many assembly members rejected this proposal. Assemblymember David Woody said he did not think it was possible to have an effect on every student on campus with a single installment and by putting most of the money in one place. He said that Casey and Rickert were being fiscally irresponsible, as they could not truly speak to what the students want their money to be put toward.

‘This money would be better off going toward scholarships or going to the students in some other manner, rather than just spending the money on a big name that will quickly become old news in two or three years,’ Woody said. ‘I think we should amend this or table this until next meeting.’

Assemblymember Sean Dinan also strongly disagreed with the bill and said he was uncomfortable giving most of the funds to an organization whose events often disappoint students.

The largest issue members had with the bill, which surfaced numerous times during debate, was why Casey and Rickert have known about this bill since the spring of last year and are just now telling the general assembly about it.

Many representatives said they did not like the idea of talks happening behind closed doors, but others supported Casey and Rickert and said they had confidence in the ability of the president and the comptroller to do their jobs.

Rickert noted that several other bills, such as cyberbullying, have been passed the same night they were presented.

Eugene Law, SA parliamentarian, made a motion to table the bill, or to hold off voting, until the next meeting, as many members said it was too much to have the bill presented and voted on all in the same night without having the ability to come up with more ideas on how to use the money first.

Amy Snider, SA chief of staff, said that not all new members could properly understand what exactly they were voting on yet.

After voting against tabling the bill and making several amendments to the wording, it was passed 45 to 10.

Rickert said he and Casey created the best way to give the student activity fee back to the students.

‘My job is to make sure the most students are pleased with the use of the student activity money,’ Rickert said after the meeting. ‘By working with Neal and Rob we came up with a proposal that can really do that and have not only an immediate impact, but a lasting impact as well.’

Other business discussed:

• SA is now operating at 93 percent capacity with the election of freshman Whitney Hoblit to represent the College of Visual and Performing Arts and freshman Spencer Tingley to represent the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science. There are only five seats left to fill in the general assembly, two in the School of Education and three in VPA.

• Lynde Folsom, Alexandra Curtis and Dylan Lustig presented a report from their trip to an American Student Government Association National Conference. Curtis said SA could work on better training members and bettering communication with constituents. She said SA was the only student government at the conference that was broken down by college instead of class, a quality other schools admired.

• Rickert presented special programming bills that awarded Phi Alpha Delta $450, College Republicans $3,000, Kappa Phi Lambda $483.50, First Year Players $169 and the Hong Kong Cultural Organization $4,590.

rebarill@syr.edu

Published on October 17, 2011 at 12:00 pm