By Joe Suszczynski
The Student Government Association spent much of its last meeting Wednesday debating several motions heavily.
Perhaps the most debated was a motion made by Sen. Kory Mills to approve the Dance Team line item change, moving $800 in line-item “pom-poms” to get warm-up jackets.
“They aren’t asking for the entire amount that warm-ups would cost so that’s a plus. We granted them $800 originally and as of now the money is just sitting there because they have pom-poms,” said Mills. “It’s a line-item change. They already have the pom-poms. They have $800 just sitting there in their account. If they don’t use it for anything it just comes back to us. I think it looks pretty bad of us if we just have $800 coming back to us because we didn’t approve a line-item change.”
Treasurer Nick Alaimo opposed this motion, citing a previous request from the Rugby Club.
“When we deny something we deny it for a reason. The Dance Team, we’re going to give $800 to embroidered warm-up jackets so it’s going to be unique to them. They are going to keep those jackets,” said Alaimo. “To be consistent it’s not what we’ve been following. For example, the Rugby Club, we denied their shorts and socks because that is a unique item to the player.”
Sen. Bepin Mgushi was in favor of the motion. He says that the Dance Team needed the warm-ups for the upcoming colder weather that the fall brings.
“These girls are going to pay $50 out of their pockets, so we are not completely paying for their warm-up jackets. The money is there, we are just giving them the OK to use their money,” says Mgushi.
Sen. Bobby Berriault opposed the motion saying that the Dance Team has warm-up jackets, but complaining about the quality of them.
The motion failed by a count of seven to 18 with three abstentions.
Mills also made a motion to approve the Exercise Science line-item change in which $255 would go from line-item “speakers” to “conferences” for the registration fee as well as $245 from line-item “speakers” to “other” for majors night.
“They requested money for a conference for the entire club to go to. We denied it based on lack of information. They returned, asked for $255 to send three students to the same conference to compete in a science bowl,” said Mills.
Sen. Ryan Baldassario spoke against the motion telling senators to vote it down if they did not like any part of the motion.
The motion passed with 15 yes votes to nine no votes with four abstentions.
Sen. Jeremy Truex also made a motion in response to the Dance Clubs’ request that would create a standing rule where clubs cannot make a line-item change that was denied in its request budget.
“As of now in our bylaws for contingency requests and co-sponsorships you cannot request funds for a line-item that was specifically denied in your base budget. It’s not covered for line-items,” said Truex. “It’s kind of a loophole that people can work through. I think that if you were explicitly denied in your base budget that you will not be allowed to have that line-item. We should not let you take funds from another event that we already told you that’s okay to do to create a new event, which we already told you can’t do.”
Vice President Liz Braun opposed the motion, saying it is too “rigid.”
“I don’t think we should be the ones to say how club leadership run their club in a strict way. I don’t think that we should be so strict in saying ‘We allow you to do this event. We allow you to use these funds in this way. I don’t think we should be acting that way. I think we sound very power hungry in using that language,” said Braun. “I also think it’s too ridged. I think that we should allow clubs to be able to change and improve. I don’t think that this is the right motion to be making right now and the wording should be looked at as well.”
Baldassario spoke in favor of the motion saying it would eliminate “loopholes” in the constitution.
“We don’t want the constitution bylaws to have loopholes. It’s not something we want to have. If you want to further review it, make better bylaws that are more defined,” said Baldassario.
Truex then motioned to amend his motion so that it would read as, “To create a standing rule that no club may request a line item change that was denied in their request budget.” The amendment subsequently passed.
Sen. Chris Marcelli spoke against the motion. He said that if the senate takes away its clubs’ flexibility, then it takes away their flexibility and that the senate proved today that they can see loopholes and make the right decisions with two different line-item changes.
The motion failed with three yes votes to twenty-two no votes.
Sen. Cory Manento motioned a resolution of the Student Government Association regarding final exam grades.
The resolution stated that final exam grades were not readily available to all students at CCSU and that the SGA would support an initiative for final exam grade transparency with the suggestion that the Academic Standards Committee require the posting of all final exam/project/paper grades online at the time of the final semester grade posting.
There was not any opposition from the senate and the resolution was then passed with only two abstentions.
Senator Ashley Anderson motioned a resolution that supported bringing a Redbox kiosk to CCSU.
The resolution stated that the SGA is trying to find ways to make campus life more enjoyable for students. It also said that there was some student support for this due to over 300 completed surveys and more than 500 “likes” on the social networking site Facebook.
Sen. Manento said that he would be against this resolution if there would only be one Redbox kiosk on campus.
The resolution was then passed.