Representatives passed the Finance Board’s recommendations to fully, partially and not fund bills, during the Student Association annual budget meeting. SA President Neal Casey said the meeting ran smoothly.

The bills were voted on and passed as packaging bills in three votes at the meeting Monday in Maxwell Auditorium. The packages were the 41 fully funded bills, the 10 partially funded bills and 79 of the 80 not funded bills. One bill that wasn’t funded was pulled for later discussion and one special programming bill was passed.

Several student organizations attended the meeting to thank SA for funding, and other groups that did not receive funding questioned the reasoning and argued against the decisions. Student organizations raised questions about how the system works.

Veronica Abreu, president of La L.U.C.H.A., spoke up at the meeting after the organization’s events did not receive funding. Funding was not granted because of issues with the events’ date confirmations, and the board did not believe the group had the programming capital or was in the correct tier to receive the amounts requested.

Abreu said she and her organization do not understand the process of finding budgetary information or why the organization did not receive partial funding, but she said the organization would appeal both events.

Christina Jones, the National Association of Black Journalists president, spoke to the assembly about her issues with the tier system after the organization did not receive any funds for an event. The budget notes on this bill questioned whether the organization held the programming capital to be funded that amount of money.

‘I understand that your new system is based on past excellencies, but I do not agree with this at all,’ Jones said. ‘I don’t like that system because it will put us in the same pattern year after year, and we are always going to have to go through the appeals process in order to get money.’

Comptroller Jeff Rickert said the financial vision does not state that past failures mean an organization’s event will never get funding. The system is based on building programming capital.

‘If you have a bad event, maybe you should consider requesting less money if you are in a lower tier,’ Rickert said. ‘The tiers are all capped at a certain amount, so have an event that costs less money, build your programming capital and build up into higher tiers. So my best advice would be to request a lesser amount for your events.’

Many organizations did not receive funding at the meeting and will appeal to the board. Jerk magazine, a publication that has received funding in the past, did not receive any funds from SA. Flash Steinbeiser, editor in chief of Jerk, said in a phone interview after the meeting that the lack of funding was because of an error in the application, but Jerk would be appealing for the $15,944.40 originally requested. Steinbeiser was the feature editor at The Daily Orange in fall 2010.

The only bill to be pulled from any of the three packages for debate was a request from the Chinese Students and Scholars Association for an event titled Blind Date. Budget notes state that at the hearing, it was expressed that attendees would need to speak Chinese to understand the event. SA Parliamentarian Eugene Law took issue with this for being the reason for not granting the organization funds.

Law said he felt the Finance Board did not follow codes because there is nothing in the codes stating events cannot be held in different languages. He said he feels it is discriminatory to deny funding based on language.

‘That is like saying we can’t fund for a dance party because physically disabled students can’t dance,’ Law said.

The motion to approve the bill failed, and Law made a motion to refer the bill back to the Finance Board for reconsideration and the organization’s ability to makes changes. The second motion passed without contention.

A separate bill — Representation for University College — passed without contention.

‘It will put the option to have a seat in SA up on the ballot this November on MySlice for a referendum vote, so students who go in to vote for president, comptroller and assembly will also be able to vote on whether or not they want to see University College have a seat in SA,’ said Taylor Carr, Student Life Committee chair.

Carr said if the vote passes, a seat will be added immediately.

rebarill@syr.edu

Published on November 7, 2011 at 12:00 pm