Yesterday, the Georgetown University Student Association Senate tied up some loose ends from last week’s meeting, including, passing electoral reform laws, the FY13 budget, and the executive cabinet.

One of the few new items at the meeting the briefing by GUSA president Clara Gustafson (SFS ’13) who talked about Georgetown Day. Gustafson said the executive has received around 20 applications for the Georgetown Day committee already (they make it look so easy), and they are moving ahead with planning.

The senate also approved the executive cabinet unanimously.

The second new item was the approval of the GUSA fund, which gave $350 to the Georgetown Israel Alliance for their annual Independence Day celebration. The Alliance requested $500, but that was brought down “for reasons of frugality,” according to Nate Tisa (SFS ’14).

From last week, the senate approved the FY13 budget after nearly a month from its initial draft publicaiton before spring break.

Also from last week, the senate passed the Omnibus Electoral Accountability and Regulation Act of 2012, which was virtually the same as last week except that it removed some stipulations to allow the Election Commission to use their best judgement in the exact punishment (instead of specifying it for them).

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The Georgetown University Student Association passed a resolution supporting the recently-launched student-run website StopCrimeNotParties.com on Sunday afternoon.

The bill, introduced by Speaker Adam Mortillaro (COL ’12) and Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13), both of whom are associated with the site, gives GUSA’s support to the efforts of the new site.

StopCrimeNotParties.com encourages students to report inappropriate behavior by MPD, SNAP, DPS, or neighbors toward students.

Full text of the resolution:

WHEREAS, the District of Columbia City Council, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police Department, has recently enacted a new noise ordinance, of which that many in the Georgetown University have expressed concern; and,

WHEREAS, a group of students has created the “Stop Crimes not Parties” movement, involving an aggressive public relations campaign, directed at enhancing the position of college students in the District with regards to the new regulation; and

WHEREAS, the group’s website, StopCrimeNotParties.com, aims to educate students and provide them with an opportunity to report authority malfeasance with regard to the new noise law.

THE GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY SENATE,

DOES hereby support and endorse the efforts of this new movement, and encourage all students to visit the website and obtain a yard sign to show support for the Georgetown student body.

The majority of this week’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association Senate was spent considering the arguments of Georgetown, Divest!, which is pushing the University to divest from companies that profit from human rights violations in Israel and Palestine. The Senate also spent some time debating the Academic Working Group’s diversity requirement recommendation, but did not vote on any legislation at the meeting. Here’s the wrap:

Georgetown, Divest!: Jackson Perry (COL ’12) presented the case Georgetown, Divest! is making to the Senate in the early part of the meeting. (Disclosure: Perry is an assistant photo editor for the Voice). Perry told the senators that his group has come to the conclusion that the University has exercised little oversight over the companies it has invested in, and has no process to ensure that the University was investing only in socially responsible companies which lived up to the University’s Jesuit principles.

Perry cited an article written by the Voice‘s Cole Stangler saying, “While divestment is non-negotiable to administrators, it appears that Georgetown’s Jesuit and Catholic identity is.” Perry said his group was focusing on pushing the University to institute a process that allows it to invest in a socially responsible way, and to specifically promise not to invest in eight companies selected by Georgetown, Divest! as particularly egregious in perpetuating human rights violations in Israel and Palestine. Several senators seemed to take issue with the group’s focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on eight companies in particular.

“There seems to be a political agenda here as well,” GUSA Senator Nick Troiano (COL ’11) said.

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At this week’s Georgetown University Student Association Senate meeting, the Senate voted down the only legislation that came up for a vote—institutionalizing GU-SPAN—but not before they had debated the measure extensively. After rejecting the legislation, the Senate turned to voicing their opinions on recent area crimes and the suggestions of the diversity initiative, which they seem generally opposed to.

Institutionalizing GU-SPAN: It’s unclear what motivated Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12) to introduce the “Act to Amend the By-Laws to Institutionalize the Georgetown University Student Public Affairs Network.” The network, better know as GU-SPAN, live-streams meetings of the GUSA Senate, and has approximately 5 regular viewers. Talbot’s bill would have created an administrator for GU-SPAN in charge of live-streaming the GUSA meetings.

Talbot suggested that the position, which would take four to five hours a week, include a stipend of around $300. Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13) exhibiting the shrewdness that comes with serving on the Finance and Appropriations Committee, suggested accepting applications for the position without offering a stipend, and only offering the stipend if no one offered to volunteer. Ultimately, however, the Senate voted the bill down even after the Senate had amended the bill to simply make it the responsibility of the vice-speaker to make sure meetings were live-streamed.

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The agenda of this Sunday’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association was dominated by the vote on the budget passed out of the Financial Appropriations Committee for fiscal year 2011 on Thursday.

But Senators still found time to remark on the most recent controversy at Georgetown, the Plan A protest held over GAAP weekend, and dream about convening the GUSA Senate in the chamber of the US House of Representatives.

GUSA Budget FY ’11: The GUSA Senate voted to approve the fiscal year 2011 GUSA budget, which allocated $0 to both the Student Activities Commission and the Performing Arts Advisory Council. The budget will increase the level of funding received by Club Sports, Georgetown Program Board, the Center for Social Justice, and the GUSA Executive, while funding for the Media Board will remain unchanged.

Members of the Financial and Appropriations Committee who presented the budget said they had brought the budget without funding for either SAC or PAAC before the Senate because they didn’t want to delay funding for the other advisory boards. They are working to reach agreements with SAC and PAAC on compromises so the two groups could meet GUSA’s six suggested reforms and receive money from the student activities fee.

The senators said they were confident that both PAAC and SAC would receive student activities fee from supplemental funding after they had complied with the reforms. Senators have said that the agreement with PAAC is only awaiting a review by its members. Meanwhile, Senators will meet with SAC soon to try to negotiate an agreement.

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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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If we learned anything about the GUSA Senate this Monday night it’s that they have a USPS-like devotion to braving the elements.  As the rest of the school buckled down for our second-consecutive snow day, the Senate reaffirmed that neither snow nor gloom of night would interfere with its commitment to legislating.

And legislate it did, slogging through a two-hour discussion before passing the controversial Act to Modify the By-laws to Improve Student Activities Funding by a vote of 19 to four.  The bill will strip advisory boards of their votes on allocating the Student Activities Fee, giving control of the process to GUSA’s Finance and Appropriations Committee.

The meeting opened with a period of public comment on the bill.  The three student who spoke all expressed opposition to the changes.  Nick Calta (COL ’10), Chair of the Advisory Board for Club Sports, cautioned that the bill would create “the potential for really wide fluctuations in funding”; a representative from the Center for Social Justice decried the adversarial tone of the debate and urged senators to think about “what kind of leadership this legislation is promoting”; and former GUSA Senator and current GUSA Presidential Candidate Matt Wagner (SFS ’11) warned that it would be “a huge mistake” to pass the bill.

After a quick executive briefing—in which GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11), when asked by a Senator about his stance, said he “fully endorsed” the bill—the act’s co-sponsors, Senators Nick Troiano (COL ’11, Village A: A-D) and Colton Malkerson (COL ’13, Harbin 2-5), gave their spiel about bill, explaining what exactly it would change and why they believe it is necessary.

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Given the kind of concerned, accusatory letters some advisory board leaders sent in the last week, the town hall that the Georgetown University Student Association hosted last night to shed additional light on its proposed funding reforms was surprisingly quiet. A few students grudgingly observed that they didn’t think GUSA had enough knowledge about the various advisory boards to oversee the new club funding process they are proposing, and club representatives individually worried about how specific events their group holds will be affected by the potential funding changes. But for the most part, the town hall was uncontentious. It even ended early.

It kicked off with a half-hour presentation by members of GUSA’s Finance and Appropriations Committee detailing the reforms they intend to (or already have) passed in order to completely remake the current process by which student groups at Georgetown get funding, followed by a about an hour-and-a-half long question and answer session.

Standing below a large powerpoint presentation in a lecture hall in Reiss, members of the FinApp committee reiterated the now-familiar goals of funding reform, among them increasing transparency and efficiency in the funding process, and improving oversight of those involved in allocating the Student Activities Fee, the $50 that each student pays at the beginning of each semester. FinApp members also touched on some of the things they feel show that there their efforts have student consensus, like the Accountability and Reform Amendment—an amendment that students passed in 2006 giving GUSA the authority to the authority to audit the advisory boards and final say as to how much money is appropriated to each board.

Greg Laverriere (COL ‘12) walked the audience of about thirty students through the results of a club satisfaction survey GUSA conducted last semester (see the results here), and summed up student sentiment about the current funding process.

“Student clubs and organizations face an uphill climb to secure resources and receive reasonable control over their activities …. Student clubs and organizations are not getting the money they deserve and need,” he said, adding that the club funding process is bloated and opaque compared to the process at peer schools.

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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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