The Student Government Association budget was approved last week after a constitutional violation.
An emergency meeting was called to pass the SGA budget, which wasn’t presented to Student Senate in time.
Student Senate has until the fourth week of classes to approve the budget, according to the SGA bylaws. But the SGA president must submit the budget proposal to Student Senate within the first two weeks of the semester, according to the SGA constitution. This didn’t happen.
“In the past, if there have been issues where people feel like the constitution was violated, then it could be members that say ‘we feel like this is a problem,’” said Lesley Black, associate dean of students and Senate adviser.
SGA President Randy Gipson-Black said he was unable to submit the $152,763 budget proposal on time because enrollment numbers from the School of Law were not finalized.
The Student Bar Association is the law school’s SGA counterpart. SGA provides them with a financial allocation based on a formula that requires the number of law student credit hours.
“They have their own registrar, so, therefore, they calculate their own numbers,” Gipson-Black said.
The wrong numbers were used last semester, causing a misallocation of funds in which SGA gave the law school an extra $1,492, Gipson-Black said.
“We have to wait on them in order to figure out their allocation correctly,” he said. “We wanted to get the most accurate, up-to-date numbers, and they weren’t finalized.”
Since it took so long to get the final numbers from the law school, an emergency meeting had to be called to vote on the budget.
“It had to happen now,” Gipson-Black said. “It couldn’t wait longer.”
Black said the Student Activities Council asked for the budget to be approved because they need funding for their events. SAC’s Free Movie Night is scheduled Thursday and tickets needed to be purchased.
Amending the budget
A steering committee met Sept. 11 to discuss the budget. Gipson-Black presented a breakdown of the budget before discussion and voting took place.
SBA received $29,554 for the academic year.
The SAC budget received the most cuts.
Last year, SAC had a budget of $11,500 for Homecoming. This year’s Homecoming budget is $6,000.
SAC’s sports tailgates were implemented last year to increase attendance at sporting events. The budget for these tailgates was cut from $4,000 to $2,000.
SAC’s union events included Stress Relief Week, Midnight Breakfast and “other.” The “other” line item was $1,000 and was cut. SAC’s discretionary budget also was lowered from $5,500 to $4,000.
The salary for Monica Hiller, SAC vice president, was lowered from $2,000 to $1,600.
The president and vice president are not taking a salary this year because they want the money to go to other areas.
Hiller said she went in with an ideal budget, which she knew would likely get cut.
“I find no harm in really laying it out there and saying ‘this exactly what I want, this is what would be absolutely ideal,’ but I also realize that’s not reality,” she said. “I expected there to be cuts on the final numbers.”
Hiller said she also didn’t account for the SBA allocation when creating the SAC budget.
“Forgetting about that is a big reason why I think it was cut so much,” she said. “I don’t think students are going to notice. I think we’re going to get really creative in our spending.”
SAC members will try to get more sponsors and donors this year to help with the cost of events, Hiller said. She also said students probably would not be affected by the SAC budget cuts.
“We’re still doing all those things that everybody comes to expect as OCU students, and we’re adding a couple more things this year,” she said.
Money for later
Once amendments and adjustments were made, $5,250 was left over. The “Student Senate Allocations” line item received $1,000. Senate allocations can be given to student organizations that attend Senate meetings and present a bill that requests funding.
Members agreed to create a “miscellaneous” line with the remaining $4,250. This funding can only be accessed by the president, vice president or SAC vice president. Randy Gipson-Black must give approval to withdraw the funds.
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