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.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday night, the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee passed a budget on to the full GUSA Senate with allocations for most of the advisory boards. The Performing Arts Advisory Council and Student Activities Commission were allocated $0, neither board having signed an agreement with FinApp to enact the remaining GUSA reforms for the advisory boards.

SAC is still resisting GUSA pressure to institute public voting on student clubs’ budget, a sticking point that FinApp members and SAC will try to resolve soon. PAAC, by contrast, does not seem to be resistant to any of the reforms they still have left to implement. At tonight’s FinApp meeting, Senator Colton Malkerson (COL ’13) said that PAAC’s members wanted more time to review the agreement proposed by GUSA and were also awaiting discussions with the Vice President for Student Affairs’s office about how to spend down their reserves from $134,000 to $50,000.

FinApp is holding the $25,000 it anticipates allocating to PAAC in GUSA’s reserves until PAAC signs its agreement. The committee passed the budget unanimously.

Tuesday night’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriation Committee was all anti-climax, with the Senators having to put off voting on the draft budget they put together before Spring Break until Thursday.

Because details are still unclear on how the Student Activities Commission and the Performing Arts Advisory Council will adopt the remaining reforms of the six GUSA compelling the advisory boards to adopt, the FinApp Committee opted to hold off on passing the budget on to the Senate tonight until those details were fleshed out, instead of allocating $0 to PAAC and SAC and funding them later. Either way, the Senate should still consider the budget this upcoming Sunday.

For their part, SAC has yet to adopt an accountable selection process for their Chair. Senator Greg Laverriere (COL ’12) reported that SAC Chair Ethel Amponsah (NHS ’11) has just named her successor using the same closed process by which former chairs Aakib Khaled (SFS ’10) and Sophia Behnia (COL ’09) selected their successors.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »