Despite the snow, the Student Senate held their regularly scheduled meeting Thursday. Tanner Banion, senator, questioned whether there were enough students to hold a meeting, but he was duly informed that enough people arrived to meet quorum.
Matthew James, chair of the privilege fee committee, said his committee considered some unusual requests during committee meetings.
“This week we had a couple historic situations,” James said. “Student Publications asked for an out of cycle 10 percent increase in funding .”
James also said the student privilege fee was expected to go up 3 percent this year.
Natalie Rauth, chair of the committee for campus outreach, announced that more students are running for Student Senate positions this year. Some of the notable increases include over 40 people running for the College of Arts and Sciences’ 18 spots, 11 more than last year, and in the College of Architecture, 21 people filed for 2 spots, as opposed to last year when 3 people filed.
Tyler Sharp, chair of the operations committee, offered a suggestion for combining the campus outreach and public relations committees, and said his committee would be discussing the issue this week.
The Student-Centered Tuition Enhancement Committee passed on their recommendation to fund Healthy Decisions with priority funding. They did not spend the committee’s entire budget of $1,000,000 dollars this year, instead spending about $800,000 for 29 priority groups.
Final votes were also taken on two allocation issues, one bringing a speaker to campus, and the other sending twelve students from the Association of Residence Halls to El Salvador for a service project.
“They’re going to El Salvador to teach them to speak English,” Senator Ashton Archer said. “I think it’s kind of demeaning and westernizing.”
Despite Archer’s protests, the group approved funding for the trip as well as the bill to bring Dr. Peter Boonshaft to campus to speak to Tau Beta Sigma, an honorary band sorority. The expenditures totaled $3,200.
The Senate also voted to send four allocation bills for the Peters Recreation Complex back to committee.
One of the bills was for non-structural repairs to the Rec, and it was valued at $10,500 a year. It would be used to fund equipment repairs. Another would increase the 23 intramural sports teams’ funding at a rate of $1,000 a year indefinitely. Currently their total budget is set at $54,000. A third would increase funding for fifteen non-student employees at the Rec by 2 percent, and the final bill would create a fund for structural repairs to the Rec. It would start this year with a $200,000 contribution.