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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Here’s part two of Vox’s GUSA candidate surveys, featuring Village C West candidates Bruce Thomas (SFS ‘13) and Taylor Wettach (SFS ‘13), Harbin 2-5 candidate Colton Malkerson (COL ‘13), Village B candidate Matthew Hoyt (COL ‘12) and Off-Campus candidate Rahul Singh (SCS ‘10).

Read their responses after the jump!

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