The first Georgetown University Student Association Budget Summit was a real doozey, lasting from 10 a.m. all the way to 8 p.m. on Sunday. During the meeting, the advisory boards presented their budget proposals to the Finance and Appropriations Committee of the GUSA Senate, which has taken on the role of the Funding Board.

There wasn’t a whole lot of deliberation among senators since the meeting was mainly focused on presentations and actual allocation will take place later this week, but there were some interesting clues—particularly regarding SAC—about how budgets may look next year.

First came the proposals from the Georgetown Program Board and the Center for Social Justice for $45,000 and $64,000 respectively. Both proposals were well-received by the committee, but CSJ’s request for 46 percent more funding than last year faced opposition. Chairman of the Finance and Appropriations Committee Nick Troiano (COL ’11) made clear that since there was $55,000 more in requests this year than in available funds, some groups would not receive all the money they requested.

“We want to give [CSJ] more money, but I would doubt they’ll receive their full request,” Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13), who sits on the FinApp committee said.

The next budget proposal, $25,000 for the Performing Arts Advisory Council, did not go as smoothly. The FinApp Committee felt PAAC’s budget proposal lacked specifics and didn’t make clear how the requested money would be spent.

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This week’s Georgetown University Student Association meeting featured an irksome inauguration (just like Obama’s!) and tear-jerking eulogies to Philly P’s. Here’s the wrap:

Inaugurations: GUSA swore in the newly-reelected President and Vice President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) and Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11)—perhaps extraconstitutionally?

“There is a curious little quirk of the by-laws which requires the outgoing president and vice-president to administer the oath to the incoming president and vice-president,” Parliamentarian Sam Ungar (COL ‘12) told the Senate. Given that the outgoing president and vice-president and the incoming president and vice-president were one and the same, Ungar decided to administer the oath himself.

After their swearing in, both candidates delivered speeches to the GUSA senate. Kluger called on the Senate to remember Gandhi’s words to become the change they want to see in the world, while Angert urged Senators to maintain their dedication to the GUSA senate and never be afraid to throw themselves into large and challenging projects. Angert then swore in newly-elected Senator Andrew Foley (MSB ‘10), who could not raise his right hand because his arm is broken—another suspect inauguration?

GUSA Fund Bolsters Funding Board: The GUSA senate approved a bill to transfer $15,000 from the GUSA fund to the Student Activities Fee Reserve account, which is used to provide funds to advisory boards. Chairman of the Finance and Appropriations Committee Nick Troiano (COL ‘11) said he had talked with GUSA Fund Chair Kate Petersen (COL ‘11) and that she said the GUSA Fund could limit its spending to $15,000 for the semester.

“We simply want to go into the budget process with as much money as we can,” Troiano said.

New Sign: GUSA unanimously approved a bill to appropriate $200 towards the creation of a vinyl sign bearing GUSA’s logo. The bill was introduced by Senator Nolan Johnson (COL’11), who said the sign was “a great way to make use of GUSA’s new logo”.

This week’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association Senate included a heated contest to fill a vacant seat on the Finance and Appropriations committee, and a denouncement of Eric Cusimano’s extracurricular involvements. Here’s the wrap:

Finance and Appropriations Committee Post Filled

In perhaps the most contentious part of the meeting, Senator Ben Bold (COL’13) was selected by the full Senate to fill a vacancy on the Finance and Appropriations Committee. During his time for remarks, Bold said he had closely followed the work of the Finance and Appropriations Committee and had fully supported the funding board reform. Bold ran against Senator Matthew Ginsberg (COL’11), who said that he was suited for the job because he had an interest in financial allocations and had served as a director for the Corp.

During the debate over the confirmation, some Senators appeared to argue that Senator Bold was competent and self-motivated, and therefore should be opposed. Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ‘12) warned against a “leadership accretion” on the FinApp Committee, while FinApp Chair Nick Troiano (COL ‘11) said, “Our committee has enough ambition and self-motivated people … We have to distribute this energy to all the committees.” Ultimately, however, Bold’s attributes were deemed more of a good thing than a bad thing, and he was approved by a 10-8 vote.

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After last week’s high-stakes and controversial Georgetown University Student Association meeting, where they passed comprehensive funding reform legislation, this week’s meeting hewed closer to classic GUSA style: longer than necessary, peppered with perfunctory legislation, and largely innocuous.

The 2010 GUSA Presidential Debate

The meeting began with a discussion about the much-anticipated GUSA Presidential Debate. Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ‘12) said it will be “99 percent sure taking place on Wednesday, 89 percent sure taking place in Sellinger Lounge,” with the doubt over the location due to the fact that they have not yet reserved the Lounge. GUSA Parliamentarian Sam Ungar (COL ‘12) said that the debate would include all four presidential candidates, and feature questions from representatives of the major campus media organizations.

Public Comment Legislation

The first bill passed by the GUSA Senate changed the GUSA bylaws to require the Finance and Appropriations Committee to convene a public hearing within seven days of drafting of a budget so that representatives of advisory boards can voice concerns they may have over the budget. The bill also requires the speaker to allow for a period of public comment during the general senate meeting at which the budget will be voted on.

The bill faced essentially no opposition, mostly because it wasn’t changing the current practices. As Speaker Talbot said when he voiced his support for the bill, “The seven day waiting period is already sort of institutionalized… and I think it was sort of connoted in the wording that that time was there for individual chairs of the advisory boards to come and voice their concerns.” The bill was approved unanimously.

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At Sunday’s meeting, GUSA established that this year’s presidential elections would be accompanied by a debate between all the candidates. God know what the actual elections will look like, though—Senators lost the bill they passed last year setting down the terms for this year’s election. They also approved some members for the GUSA Fund’s board and debated rescheduling this week’s Funding Reform Town Hall around students’ TV watching schedules. Here’s the wrap:

Election Season: In his executive briefing to the Senate, Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) announced that he and his vice president, Jason Kluger (MSB ‘11), would be running again for president and vice-president respectively. Angert said he and Kluger had discussed the option and decided that “there are a lot of things we still can get done.” (See Molly Redden’s post to read about the agenda Angert and Kluger are running on.)

But if the conclusion of this section of the meeting was any indication of how smoothly elections will go this year, after the catastrophe that was the 2009 elections, the outlook is not good. Our Senators, it turns out, could not find the bill they passed last year that dictate how this year’s elections would be held.

The bill, passed just before last year’s elections, established that this year’s elections would be held as an instant runoff. The Senators could find absolutely no trace of the bill, even after one GUSA senator went back to his house to search for it. So, although several vowed they had seen it, the Senate had no choice but to forget about the Loch Ness Election Bill and address other issues.

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GUSA’s new look

This Sunday, the Georgetown University Student Association Senate had a heated debate about whether to condemn the protesters who interrupted General Petraeus’ speech in Gaston Hall. (They did, with lots of Senators stressing that they weren’t endorsing the war. Don’t worry, we got it.)  One member presented a bill to strip the advisory board representatives who sit on the Funding Board of their votes, giving GUSA more oversight of the process.

THE NEW LOGO: From Windows to Vampire Weekend, everyone is rebranding themselves these days. President Calen Angert (MSB ‘11) kicked off yesterday’s GUSA meeting with a presentation of the long-awaited GUSA logo. Angert promised the logo didn’t contain any “ripoffs of any networks,” a reference to the last logo, which Vox commenters pointed out looked a lot like this.

The logo was scrutinized by the Senate before coming to a vote at the end of the meeting, when they unanimously approved it.

THE PETRAEUS PROTESTERS: In a very contentious vote, the GUSA senate passed a bill that “condemns the disrespectful and improper actions of the Georgetown University students who disrupted the lecture of General David H. Petraeus.” But don’t worry, politicos—that’s not a GUSA endorsement of U.S. foreign policy. Colton Malkerson (COL ‘13), the sponsor of the bill, stressed that the bill was steering clear of the wider debate over the war in Afghanistan.

“It’s not stating an opinion on the debate, it is not siding with the opinions that Petraeus had said … its just recognizing the breach of policy,” Malkerson said.

In the debate that followed Colton’s presentation of the bill several Senators denounced the protesters and voiced support for the bill, but others argued that GUSA was out of place issuing a such a condemnation. Senator Nick Troiano (COL ‘11), however, said that he hoped the University brought consequences to the students who participated in the protest.

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Calen Angert and his executive office have an ambitious list of goals for what could be their final months in office.

Noting how little time he has left in his term before elections take place in February, Angert told the Voice that his focus will be on solidifying the gains he and others in the executive office had already made. “Our goals will be to really tie up things we began last semester,” Angert said.

Angert said that the executive branch would continue to work on reducing the number of 61D citations issued to students. According to Angert, only three 61D citations were given out last semester. The executive would continue to lower that number, Angert said, by increasing student awareness of the citations and by working with neighborhood groups to resolve the issue of student noise.

Angert and the executive branch are also looking to finally kick off the student-driven Saferides program. “We’ve cleared all the legal hurdles for Saferides, and we’re honestly just waiting on DPS to give us the go ahead,” Angert said.

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At yesterday’s GUSA meeting, Senators forged ahead with plans for the GUSA Fund and were briefed by the executive branch about the Readership program and buses to basketball game. Here’s the wrap:

The GUSA Fund

In a unanimous vote, GUSA passed a bill that would transfer $4,000 of its own funds into the recently created GUSA Fund. The $4,000 will be matched by $26,000 from the Funding Board for a total of $30,000. The transfer of $4,000 of GUSA’s own money was meant to show the Senate’s commitment to the new fund.

Colton Malkerson (COL ‘13), a sponsor of the bill, stated that “We do think the GUSA fund is important, necessary and will benefit students, so certainly we thought that GUSA could easily put forward $4,000.” Malkerson added that the bill was “an act of good faith for the GUSA fund.”

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GUSA’s intended punishment for the Voice

Senator Nick Troiano (COL ’11) shot back at the critics of GUSA’s funding board reform at yesterday’s meeting, delivering an eight-minute rebuttal to a recent Voice editorial, which advocated against the reform. In Troiano’s words, he wanted to “set the record straight.” He described the editorial’s claim that reform could “threaten the funding sources for clubs and sports teams” as “unfounded, incendiary remarks, that I believe are flat-out irresponsible for a campus media outlet to state.”

Troiano cited a 2006 referendum that passed with 91 percent of the vote to give GUSA the power to appropriate Student Association funds as evidence that the student population was in support of the reform. He said that “91 percent of students disagree with the editorial board” on the board’s assertion that giving the Senate absolute control over the student activities fee threatens student clubs and student life on campus.

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One of the lesser-known inalienable rights

FUNDING REFORM – THE BIG ONE: On Sunday afternoon, GUSA passed a resolution threatening to withhold student activity fee funding from advisory boards, like SAC, that do not achieve six new reforms.

First, funding boards must reduce reserve accounts so that they do not exceed 10 percent of the board’s yearly allocation, and surplus funds must be rolled into the general Funding Board’s reserve account at the end of the year. Second, advisory boards must set up an appeals process for clubs who are denied funding. Third, clubs must have the option of lump sum funding for the year instead of funding event by event. Fourth, minutes of all meetings, including information on votes, must be made available online. Fifth, members of advisory boards must either be approved by the GUSA Senate or elected by club leaders. Sixth, clubs must be given reasonable control over the money they fundraise themselves.

“It seems harsh, but it’s a necessary thing to do,” said bill sponsor Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A, A-D). “Past negotiations have sometimes fallen through.”

The bill was passed unanimously with no contentious debate.

“This has been a long time coming,” Josh Mogil (SFS ’11—Off Campus) said. “I think it’s amazing.”

Mogil said this reform was different than club funding reform in the past because this time GUSA reached out to clubs to seek their input.

The Finance and Appropriations Committee based their recommendations on an e-mail survey to club leaders and responses from the Club Summit held on Saturday. The Club Summit was a chance for student leaders to voice their concerns about club funding. The leaders were mostly concerned about the tediousness of the process, their inability to keep funds that they fundraised, the lack of transparency in SAC leadership, and the number of events that are rejected or underfunded.

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