By Lexie Schapitl and Samantha Reilly
The SGA voted last night to override the first veto of outgoing SGA President Patrick Ronk’s two-year term.
The vote was 15-5, with no abstentions.
Ronk vetoed a bill Monday that the Student Government Association passed last week that would provide $490 in funding for an Asian American Student Union comedy show with Hari Kondabolu, a Brooklyn-based comic who has performed on the Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live and Comedy Central. The AASU violated SGA and University of Maryland policies by entering into a contract before securing funding for the event, Ronk said.
After the vote, Ronk said the override was “ridiculous … I can’t believe the legislature would reward a group that lied.”
Before requesting money from the SGA, the AASU applied for a co-sponsorship with Student Entertainment Events to cover a $9,500 fee to bring the comedian to this university’s campus. But the group came to Student Entertainment Events with a signed contract for the event, and university policy prohibits the use of university funding, state funding or student group SGA funding on contracts that have already been signed, Ronk said.
“It creates a huge problem logistically … you have to have the university sign that contract,” said Ronk, noting that a previously signed contract can pressure the university or SGA to commit student funds to something they would not otherwise. “Any group that comes to the SGA with a signed contract already, we don’t fund it. … It’s not legal, essentially.”
Senior government and politics major Justin Lee, the AASU’s outgoing vice president of finance, said the group entered into a contract with the performer on March 22, and later learned they were not supposed to sign. Outgoing AASU President YLan Nguyen, a senior psychology major, also said the AASU “misinterpreted SEE’s guidance on negotiating and signing the contract.”
“As per an email saying that AASU would be responsible for the contract negotiations, we went ahead and signed it,” Nguyen said. “It was not our intention to lie or anything, it was just a misunderstanding and miscommunication, especially via email. It’s really hard to interpret those things.”
This university and Stamp Student Union helped the group get out of the contract and agreed to sign a new contract with the performer and provide the money needed, Ronk said.
Ronk said this move made him uncomfortable, as the university was essentially using student money to “bail out” a student group that had made a mistake. While the SGA bill passed last week does not put money toward the AASU contract with Kondabolu, providing funding for the event violates SGA guidelines to treat student groups fairly and equitably, Ronk said.
The SGA voted 17-1 last week to provide $490 to the AASU to pay for audio and visual equipment and a police officer for the show.
When Ronk approached the AASU with his concerns, the group told him that SEE had instructed the group to sign the contract, Ronk said. He added that SEE told the AASU to negotiate the terms of the contract but that SEE would draft up these terms.
“It’s one thing to support an event like this — and I don’t think we should — [but] it’s another thing for a student group to lie to the SGA about it,” Ronk said.
Behavioral and social sciences college representative Mark Russell said he has worked closely with the AASU and thinks the group has gone “above and beyond” to obtain SGA funding, regardless of confusion about their contract with SEE.
Russell called the bill a “standard co-sponsorship.”
“I think it’s clear that the student group has done its job for SGA,” the junior government and politics major said. “And that’s really what matters.”
Ellicott community representative Mihir Khetarpal, a sophomore economics and government and politics major, noted that the SGA has recently been promoting openness, and that this provided an opportunity to be more open in its process of funding student groups.
While the AASU’s request was for a relatively small amount of money, Aiden Galloway, a senior government and politics major and the SGA’s speaker of the legislature, also said she was concerned about setting a precedent of bailing out student groups.
“We’re basically saying that if you make a mistake, which this is … then everybody else that makes this same mistake of signing a contract and then lying about it knows that we’re just going to come to the rescue,” Galloway said.
Senior staff writer Darcy Costello contributed to this report.
