By The Editors
Imagine that every campus organization you are involved with disappeared. Most editors on the editorial board are involved in at least three organizations on campus.
OCU is known for students who are involved in numerous organizations.
Student Senate may have just taken away law students’ opportunity to be involved in any of the 68 organizations within the law school.
Due to an issue with wording in SGA bylaws, the Student Government Association allocated funding differently this year than in years past.
The Student Bar Association, a law school organization, was hit hard by the reallocation, receiving about $20,000 less than in previous years.
Read more here.
When SBA became aware of the decrease in funds, it created SB15 to restore its funding. SGA failed the bill, putting the law school’s student organizations viability in danger.
Administrators should have brought the mistake forward when they realized the wording issue during the university budget process.
While administrators do not have the power to directly change SGA bylaws, this would have allowed SGA to fix the issue with comparatively little trouble.
The blame for this should not be laid at the feet of administrators. Senators should have paused to think about their actions before voting down SB15 by a vote of 12-6.
The reduction will prevent law students from networking and participating in conferences, trial teams and community events, former Sen. Caitlin Irwin (law) said.
Senators should think about the repercussions of their choices. This was not just the rejection of a single bill.
Regardless of SGA’s intentions, they sent a clear message to a valuable part of our university’s campus. A message that Student Senate has the power to make decisions regarding all student’s money.
A new bill has been proposed that will change the allocation process for SBA in the future. It is designed to prevent something like this from happening again. If approved, it will go into effect for next year’s budgeting process.
In the meantime, OCU law students and their organizations will pay the price for SGA’s failure to act.
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