As the third week of the spring semester winds down, student groups will now turn to special programming funds to fill gaps in this year’s budgets.

The Student Association passed 22 of 24 Finance Board bills Wednesday night, making voting quorum by only one member.

President Travis Mason said the reason for the missing eight assembly members was because of evening classes. SA’s assembly capacity is 50 members but currently only has 20, 12 of whom were present Wed. night. The meeting was rescheduled from Monday due to a men’s home basketball game.

‘I do not apologize for changing the meeting from Monday to Wednesday,’ Mason said. ‘We want to be a Student Association that is connected to what the students on this campus do.’

The two bills voted down by the assembly were funding requests for conferences from the American Institute of Architecture Students and the National Society of Black Engineers.

Andrew Urankar, comptroller, said the Finance Board established a rule to fund three students to attend a conference if the registration fee is less than $150.

The board recommended not to fund any of the $600 requested for the AIAS conference in New York City because the budget proposal did not show how the conference would enrich campus life afterward.

‘We just want to keep Syracuse the number one architecture school in the country,’ said Kelly Ferguson, assembly representative for the School of Architecture.

Urankar said because money was tight, the Finance Board could not fund a lot of conferences.

The board recommended $270 of the $900 requested for the NSBE national conference, Urankar said, because the proposal showed a plan to bring a workshop back to the university.

‘You can’t juxtapose the two organizations,’ Mason said. ‘(The Finance Board) needs to be consistent.’

Mason said he felt the assembly did an ‘excellent job’ in decision-making Monday night.

‘I think the two bills they failed they did because they were saying to the Finance Board, ‘you are making a rule and not sticking to it,” he said.

The 24 bills the assembly voted on represented half a million dollars in budget requests.

‘We’ll be able to fund them inevitably with special programming funds,’ Urankar said.

Four University Union Concerts bills were passed, one allocating $100,000 for this year’s Block Party and the other three allocating zero dollars for additional concerts this semester.

‘With special programming, UU Concerts will be able to put on a Block Party with the same caliber as previous years,’ Urankar said.

As for the three bills for additional concerts, Urankar said the Finance Board could not fund these events due to budget constraints.

‘We are against this,’ said Adam Gorode, co-chair of UU Concerts. ‘But you have to do what you have to do.’

Urankar continually stressed throughout the evening that student groups could get money faster through the special programming fund than through failing the bills and sending them back to the Finance Board.

‘There is no advantage to failing these bills,’ Urankar said. ‘If you guys send these bills back, we’ll be meeting every week all semester, eating up time from these organizations.’

UU president Dennis Jacobs said he also recognized sending back a bill with a recommendation for zero dollars is only sending back zero dollars to an empty budget.

‘The plan is to go after special programming funding so that we can go ahead and give SU the block party it needs and deserves.’

A bill allocating $10,000 for UU Cinemas passed despite some debate over the mismanagement of funds last semester.

‘Last semester, UU Cinemas didn’t use the money correctly,’ Mason said. ‘We also have to keep in mind other organizations took the time to use their resources correctly.’

Urankar said the board recommended less for UU Cinemas during this round of deliberations because, since it is three weeks into the semester, there is less time to show movies.

A bill passed allocating Asian Students in America $1,984.13 for Asia Night. The group has requested $4,785.39 for the event.

‘We didn’t have enough funds to fund everything entirely,’ Urankar said. ‘Last semester the Finance Board goofed up by not funding some of these cultural groups.’

Another bill that raised some debate among the assembly was a recommendation to fund zero dollars to Pride Union, Committee for Women and Art and the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender Resource Center for a concert.

Urankar said, based on the description of the event in the proposal, this event was reaching out to the same audience as a Music and Entertainment Industry Association event that required less funding from the Finance Board in the fall.

Urankar said the Finance Board funds programming, not organizations.

‘If we start funding organizations then every organization deserves funding,’ said Sherlen Archibald, a member of the Finance Board. ‘And we don’t have money for that.’

Published on February 9, 2005 at 12:00 pm