SGA president Patrick Ronk addresses the SGA during their meeting on April 15, 2015 in the Benjamin Bannker Room.
The SGA voted unanimously in favor of an annual omnibus bill last night, which included the creation of a new liaison position for multicultural groups and the designation of $5,000 from their legislative reserves to fund student groups.
Debate on the bill, which lasted more than three hours, adjusted the organization’s bylaws for the next academic year.
Main additions to the bylaws
The Student Government Association legislature began bylaw additions by voting in favor of adding a multicultural groups liaison position.
The appointed liaison would collaborate with various multicultural groups and organizations on the campus, coordinate initiatives with the director of the diversity and inclusion office and serve on the Diversity Committee.
Continuing with the issue of diversity, the legislature also voted to add specific demographics such as gender identity and political affiliation to be represented by the director of the diversity and inclusion office.
With the student activities fees set to increase following Monday’s referendum passage, the SGA voted to lower the percentages of the funds it receives from the student activities fee to ensure it doesn’t absorb excess money. The measure did, however, decrease funding for the SGA’s legislative reserves — it will now receive $40,000 instead of $45,000, and the $5,000 difference will go toward student group funding.
“Every year we get $45,000 in legislative reserves, and we never spend all that money,” SGA President Patrick Ronk said, noting the legislative reserves often have as much as $20,000 left over by the end of the academic year. “Essentially the SGA is lowering its budget, and that’s important.”
The SGA will also now conduct informal pre-clearance of student group budgets at student groups’ requests.
And in an act of transparency, the legislature voted to allow records of committee business, such as attendance and meeting minutes, to be publicly available on the SGA’s website.
Main deletions in the bylaws
While they moved to add the multicultural groups liaison, the SGA voted to get rid of the Greek life and Shady Grove liaison.
The legislature determined the Greek life residential representative can sufficiently communicate with the Greek community, and Ronk said the Shady Grove campus can collaborate directly with the SGA because it now has its own student government.
“Everything [the Greek life liaison] would do is more or less redundant with our residential representative,” Ronk said. “We’re not in the business of creating new positions if we can’t even fill the ones we have.”
The SGA also voted to delete a bylaw requiring new student groups on the campus to be officially recognized at least three weeks before the budget application deadline to be considered for funding.
“It really wasn’t being followed or used, and it doesn’t need to be,” said Brian Nowak, the SGA’s financial affairs vice president. “There’s no reason to have that in place. As long as they’re approved when they submit the budget [application] then it’s fine. That was placing an unnecessary restriction on the groups.”
