Student Association Starts Spring Semester with Three Bills

by Myles Goldman

The Student Association started the 2013 Semester passing three bills at its meeting this past Monday night.

The first bill titled, "A Bill to Create a New Way for Student Organizations to Raise Funds," creates an SA fund allowing student organizations to borrow money for a fundraiser and then after the fundraiser pay the SA back the money borrowed.  Any additional money the organization made the organization would be able to keep.  If the organization is unable to pay the SA back after the fundraiser, then they would go into debt, and the organization would be responsible for paying the SA back the remaining money either the next time they had a fundraiser or it would be taken out of the organization's next allocation.

Other stipulations of the bill put a cap of 500 dollars on the money an organization can borrow at any one time and that the loan cannot exceed the amount the organization was originally allocated.

The second bill focused on cases where student organizations are found guilty by the University of discriminating or hazing a student.  The bill titled, "Bylaws Amendment to Protect Students from Discrimination and Hazing" "imposes finance penalties on student orgs that the Dean of Students panel is found to have hazed or discriminated against individual students," according to language in the bill.  The bill calls for the SA Finance Committee to automatically take 33 percent of an organization's funding if they are found guilty of discrimination or hazing.  The bill gives the Finance Committee the ability to apply a stiffer penalty if they deem necessary.

The bill was proposed by Nick Gumas (CCAS) and later an amendment by Freshman Senator Ryan Moorman was approved that says the financial penalty would only be leveled against a specific organization and not umbrella organizations  unless the umbrella organization had been discriminating through all their sub-umbrella organizations.

Gumas explained that the intent of the bill was not to target fraternities or sororities, which the SA does not directly fund.

The SA approved the third bill, amendments to the Joint Elections Committee Charter for this spring's SA elections.  The JEC is the organization that oversees SA elections. Although many amendments were proposed for the charter, amendments such as eliminating penalties for SA Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates who ran as a ticket were rejected by the SA.  As a result, the approved JEC Charter is very similar to last year's.

In addition to passing bills at the meeting the SA also heard a presentation from the Division of Information Technology Services.  David Steinour, Chief Information Officer for the department, spoke to the SA and told them about a 4.2 million dollar wireless network upgrade the university is currently working on over the next three years in order to improve Internet service on campus.  Steinour commented that the Mount Vernon campus along with City Hall, The Dakota, and the Smith Center had already been upgraded.  Many other buildings and halls should be completed by the end of the academic year Steinour said.

Finally, SA President Ashwin Narla told senators that the second student space proposal from his administration was to be completed by Friday, January 18th.  Narla told senators the proposal would focus on long-term goals and the plan would include building onto the third floor terrace in the Marvin Center.