Last night, the Georgetown University Student Association Senate passed the Act to Create A Referendum Regarding The Student Activities Fee and Endowment, which creates a referendum for the student body to vote on whether or not to spend the defunct $3.5 million Student Activities Fee Endowment on the Georgetown Energy’s solar panel and revolving green fund project, the New South Student Center plan, and the Social Innovation and Public Service fund, respectively. [The first two parts of the saga can be read here (I) and here (II).]

The senate approval process was held in two-parts: on Saturday, the senate convened to ask questions of representatives of the two proposals, and on Sunday, the senate passed the bill.

Some Georgetown Energy Clarifications

On Saturday, only Georgetown Energy and Taylor Price (MSB ’11, MPS ’12), author of the NSSC proposal, presented, since SIPS had already presented to the full senate.

Georgetown Energy co-founder Anthony Conyers (COL ’12) detailed the proposal’s rationale. GE originally requested $163,000 to cover only the costs of leasing the panels, and the $300,000 GE presented last week reflected the other costs of the project.

Conyers also clarified that only nine townhouses have the appropriate roofs for solar panel installation, but two of the houses may not have enough exposure to the sun. VP for facilities and student housing Karen Frank told GE that facilities doesn’t have the money to replace the roofs on the remaining townhouses.

Conyers also addressed the challenges to authorship the project received on Tuesday. Georgetown Energy and The Fund (the challenging group) reached an agreement wherein The Fund would drop all challenges and endorse the project. Still, Conyers said he has documentation that GE had been working on the revolving green fund before talking to The Fund.

Read about NSSC after the break

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Last night, the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee met once again to finalize the referendum for the proposed uses of the defunct $3.5 million Student Activities Fee Endowment. [Here's a recap of the first part of the meeting.]

The allocations are as follows (the draft referendum is reproduced below):

• Georgetown Energy’s solar panels and revolving green fund: $250,000
• New South Student Center: $2,048,412. This will fund the southern terrace and the first floor renovation with an additional $206,763 of interest earned on the account.
• SIPS fund: $1,250,000 plus the any additional interest after NSSC is fully funded.

Here’s the rationale the comittee provided on each proposal.

Georgetown Energy

The issue was whether to fund it at the original request of $163,398, which the endowment commission recommended, or at $300,000, which Georgetown Energy requested in their latest proposal.

According to Georgetown Energy, they found that the original $163,000 requested wasn’t feasible because, “Facilities is great at finding things they don’t want to pay for.” That amount would be insufficient for all 43 townhouses, and that’s not considering the revolving green fund.

As a whole, the committee, like the endowment commission before them, had no qualms with funding GE. More so, their only issue from Tuesday, GE’s relationship with SIPS, was clarified in an additional attachment, which clarified how the revolving green fund would exist should SIPS either fail the referendum or run out of money.

The committee decided on $250,000 as a half-way point between the two numbers.

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Last night, the Georgetown University Student Association Finance and Appropriations Committee met to review the final drafts of the proposed uses of the defunct $3.5 million Student Activities Fee Endowment. Starting last night but continuing tonight, Finapp will decide how much of the $3.5 million to allocate to each of the three proposals (the Social Innovation and Public Service fund, the New South Student Center, and the Georgetown Energy solar panel project) and will draft the referendum that will be put to the student body in late January.

This discussion is the almost-culmination of last year’s SAFE reform that declared the endowment defunct and the resulting endowment commission that recommended the uses for the money. The commission’s primary recomendations were for $170,000 to Georgetown Energy and $3.2 million to Healy Pub, but with the premature demise of Healy Pub, a chunk of money is left for the secondary recommendations, SIPS and NSSC. Let’s break down the proposals (actual proposals are at the end):

Georgetown Energy solar panels and revolving green fund

Originally, Georgetown Energy pitched installing solar panels on 43 university owned townhouses through a private developer. This project, besides promoting sustainable energy, would channel the profits made from selling the energy back to Pepco into the GUSA Fund. They originally requested approximately $163,000 with the promise that in 20 years, the solar panels would be turning over true profits.

However, Georgetown Energy ran into some trouble. Anticipating rises in prices stemming from things like the university not having a map of the electricity meters on townhouses, the group is now requesting $300,000. As a bigger problem, the university recently told the group that most of the townhouse roofs can’t support solar panels without renovation, which the university doesn’t have the resources for.

In lieu of placing all the solar panels on the townhouses at once, Georgetown Energy proposed installing solar panels on the seven ready-to-go townhouses and then the creation of a “revolving green fund” for the leftover money. This fund would be a separate pot of money under the purview of SIPS [we'll get to the details later], and it would fund either the latest technology of solar panels or student driven eco-friendly projects [similar to SIPS, but again, more on that later].

And one more catch: a group of students, namely Evan Abrams (SFS ’12) and Tyler Eldridge (COL ’13), claim that they came up with the revolving green fund plan and that Georgetown Energy took the idea, Social Network style. The representatives from Georgetown Energy deny any such thievery, and Finapp chair Colton Malkerson (COL ’13) said the issue has little bearing on the comittee’s job of drafting a referendum.

Overall, the committee members unanymously approved of the solar panel project in its current iteration, but some members expressed some uncertainty about their partnership with SIPS.

The other two projects are after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

GUSA’s Finance and Appropriations committee has named the “Working Groups” to be responsible for creating plans to implement the proposals of the Student Activities Endowment Commission.

The groups, operating in tandem with FinApp, will be responsible for further developing the set of proposals approved by the Endowment Commission at the end of April. The working groups will be responsible for researching the feasibility of each project, obtaining formal University support for proposals and then developing plans for their implementation.

According to the operating procedures established by FinApp, “[the feasibility of projects] must be determined for primary recommendations by the end of the fall 2011 semester and for secondary recommendations by the end of February 2012.”

A group consisting of three FinApp members, along with student body president and vice-president Mike Meaney (SFS ’12) and Greg Lavarierre (COL ’12), will oversee groups implementing specific projects. Individual working groups have been established to study the Healy Student Space and Solar Energy proposals, along with the alternative proposed allocations for the SIPS fund and New South Student Center.

After the jump, read the full FinApp report including membership of each group.

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The SAFE commission voted last night to allocate nearly all of its $3.4 million endowment to the creation of the Healy Student Space as part of its primary recommendation to GUSA’s Finance and Appropriations committee.

The commission also designated a “secondary” slate of projects to consider in the event that the Healy project proves unfeasible, with money potentially going towards a new student space in New South, the SIPS social entrepreneurship fund, and an omnibus grant for improvements to existing student spaces.

In total, the SAFE commission voted to recommend $3,230,000 be allocated towards the Healy Pub, with the remaining $170,000 going towards the construction of energy-saving solar panels on university townhouses.

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Tuesday night, the Endowment Commission met to decide the fate of the $3.4 million Student Activities Fee Endowment. Coming off a closed executive session on Sunday, the commission weighed in on the main ideas left on the table.

All the commissioners present selected Georgetown Energy’s $170 million thousand proposal to install solar panels on 43 townhouses as a primary recommendation. The money saved from solar energy use would feed into the GUSA fund.

As for Healy Pub, the commission attempted to balance its desire to give the proposal a vote of confidence, while still funding other requests.

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The Georgetown University Student Association announced the final composition of the Commission on Student Activities Endowment Reform this past weekend.

The commission will be tasked with determining the allocation of the additional funds that are able to be used for student programming following the vote this past semester to approve the SAFE reforms.

The commission is made up of representatives of each of the funding boards, along with members of GUSA, the Corp, and GUASFCU. Four students-at-large, including commission Chairman Andrew Curtis (MSB ’11), will also be a part of the committee.

After the jump see the list of all the commission members and the commission’s guiding document.

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