Student Government Association is renegotiating the financial relationship between them and the law school’s Student Bar Association.
SGA received a budget cut this year, but allocated more money to Student Bar Association than in previous years.
SGA passed its budget for the fall semester as $74,143 and allocated $32,576 to SBA.
The budget for SGA is based off of the student service fees that students pay in the beginning of the semester. The money from that fee goes to the student affairs office and university officials are responsible for allocating money to SGA’s budget. They determine the budget off of the previous year’s budget and how much money they think SGA will need.
Once the final number has been approved by two-thirds vote from Student Senate, SGA then breaks down the budget into different categories where they will allocate the money, including student organizations and Student Activities Council. The allocation to SBA from the SGA budget is based off of an equation in the SGA by-laws that utilizes undergraduate student credit hours and law student credit hours as indicators of the needs of each organization.
“The process is fairly burdensome,” SGA President Chance Johnson said. “I just want to create a simpler process that allows everyone to have confidence in what their budgets are going to be.”
SGA and SBA came to the agreement in Spring 2013, after an issue stemmed from wording in SGA’s bylaws which affected the amount of funding granted. It resulted in about a $20,000 cut from the law group’s budget.
The executive cabinet and a few Senate officers are handling the renegotiation.
“We are just waiting on SBA to finish reviewing the current agreement, but we hope to resolve this issue as soon as possible,” Johnson said.
Under the new negotiation, the process of finding out how much to allocate to SBA would be easier than working through the equation.
Johnson said they have not started drafting a new policy but he hopes they will soon.
SGA wants to do this because enrollment numbers fluctuate during the year and it was easier to make sure SBA gets the money they need, Johnson said.
“We try our best to get the money to them but the new process will definitely make it easier,” Johnson said.
Students are worried that the renegotiation will take too long to figure out.
“I mean yes the law school needs their money and we need to get it to them, but why would we try to fix something that wasn’t broken,” said Loni Carbaugh, psychology junior. “I know that it took a while to figure this agreement out in the first place.”
Contributing: Emily Wiley, editor-in-chief.
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