GUSA Roundup: Hyde and Seek
Posted by: Lillian Kaiser in News, Vox Populi, tags: GUSA Budget, GUSA Roundup
Represents the Registrar… or until recently, GUSA’s budget
Keeping his promise from last week, GUSA Speaker Reggie Greer (COL ’09) started off this week’s meeting with a rather lengthy brief from the Registrar about MyAccess, the (unpopular) new information system. Here’s the one-sentence version: After Y2K, the Provost started the $14 million process of changing from Student Access + to MyAccess, which finished testing in the fall and will be rolled out slowly in the next year or so.
When students began to use the new system to preregister for Fall ’09 classes, the Reg said he told his wife, “Eat a big breakfast, because at the end of the day I might be toast.” As of Wednesday, he said, the number of people whose preregistration requests had been approved was only in the double digits. Let’s hope this toast falls jelly side up.
But the fun really began later in the evening when your favorite Band of Bros took on the budget. Newly inaugurated President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) opened up the can of worms by urging the importance of getting campus clubs to spend down the $700,000 they have squirreled away in interest-free rainy day funds. Matt Wagner (SFS ’11), (back from a two-week absence due to his role in Mask and Bauble’s production of Jekyll and Hyde), bristled at the idea, askingAngert why he thinks spending down those reserves is a responsible decision.
GUSA’s failure to approve their budget has made other student organizations confused, if not a little frustrated. Ever the peacemaker, Reggie reminded the Senate that they’re leaving clubs in financial limbo.
“It looks like we’re on ten different pages, when really what’s happening is that we’re on the same page, just in ten different spots,” he said. Here’s hoping the slow readers can pick up the pace.
Vice Speaker Nick Troiano (COL ’11) introduced two bills, the first to create a student commission to investigate new sources of funding for community service. The Finance Appropriations Committee balked at the idea of someone else looking into money matters. Matt, in particular, took the matter personally.
“This looks like AN ACT TO: circumvent an existing Senate committee as well as CSJ board,” he said.
Then, the real issue came out: Nick attacked the budget Matt helped create as the head of the FAC, at which point Matt took it upon himself to leave the room with two buddies so the Senate would lose quorum and couldn’t vote on anything.
Fortunately, the absence of a quorum has to be suggested by someone in the room before the Senate loses its potency, and no one did until after they’d past Nick’s first bill, and thoroughly discussed the other. This one brought the budget issue full-circle: it’s a bill that uses the last of GUSA’s leverage (read: refusing to approve the budget) to force the funding board to meet some higher standards. Like what? Filing paperwork, a pretty lofty goal for a body that had no oversight three years ago. And spending down those rainy day funds too. This bill passed as well, no thanks to Matt, who was eventually persuaded to come back into the room.
Just another day’s work for the Georgetown student Senators. And don’t forget, next meeting after elections, there’s going to be ten more of them. I hope there will be name games. Two truths and a lie with the GUSA Senate? Yes please.
Photo from Flickr user FrancoisRoche using a Creative Commons license.
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The Registrar sounds like a pretty cool guy.
With all due respect, how has the failure to pass the budget made any of the clubs or boards at all confused?
It’s like being concerned at a dinner that you’re running low on money because you have $10 cash in your wallet but $1000 in your ATM account.
They have $800k in reserves. Even assuming arguendo that GUSA did not give out ANY money – period – to any of the boards, the boards could float by on their reserve accounts with the same amount of funding for at least 10 years or so (seriously, do the math). The only group that might be affected would be Club Sports, which never had time to grow a huge reserve account (which is a Good Thing).
So, either way GUSA ends up allocating these funds (and I don’t see it shifting too much, except to possibly try and get the money for the Georgetown Fund), it’s not going to affect the day-to-day workings of clubs at all — contrary to what some board members might be disingenuously saying.
GUSA’s trying to get accountable financing and the boards to actually spend down their massive reserves. The budget last year wasn’t passed until April 10th or so, so it’s not like this is unprecedented.
[...] for next year was hashed out roughly two months ago, GUSA would have approved it by now. Instead, they’ve rejected it twice and are pushing hard to get it approved before the last day of [...]