At its last meeting, the 14th ASSU Undergraduate Senate voted to fund the Legal Counseling Office (LCO) through general fees reserves. The 15th ASSU Undergraduate Senate was sworn in after the meeting’s conclusion.
The LCO had previously fallen 17 votes short of receiving funding on the special fees ballot, the only group to be denied special fees funding.
Prior to the transition, senators also confirmed a Nominations Committee (NomCom) bill nominating students to University committees, with nine voting in favor and three abstaining due to conflicts of interest with nominees. NomCom co-chairs John Dodini ’13 and Jonathan York ’13 said that they were generally satisfied with the interest expressed in University committees.
“I am very confident in all the nominees,” York said. “One disappointment is that we didn’t have the opportunity to appoint a male student to the Sexual Assault Advisory Board, purely because we did not have an applicant.”
A bill that proposed a $40,000 grant for the LCO consumed almost an hour of debate. The organization has been funded by special fees for the past 20 years, and despite its rejection on the spring ballot, Deputy Chair Garima Sharma ’15 proposed granting the LCO money from the ASSU buffer fund.
Senators eventually decided to allocate funding from the ASSU’s general fees reserves, unspent funds previously earmarked for student groups. Both the general fees reserves and the buffer funds are comprised of student money.
Over the course of debate, senators took three straw polls to gauge opinions. On the first vote, 10 senators voted to fund the LCO through the buffer fund and two through the general fees reserves. By the third vote, the vast majority of senators had changed their minds and decided unanimously to use the general fees reserves.
Senator Daniela Olivos ’15, one of the original two voters in favor of using the general fees reserves, stressed that it would set a bad precedent if the Senate bypassed use of money that was specifically set aside for this purpose. The buffer funds, on the other hand, have significantly fewer guidelines governing its use. Buffer fund spending would also require approval by the Graduate Student Council.
“I think the general fees reserve is for exactly this money we are asking for, and the buffer fund doesn’t have a set goal,” Olivos said. “The general fees reserve is already set for things like this, so I am confused as to why we wouldn’t use it.”
Outgoing ASSU President Robbie Zimbroff ’12 M.A. ’13 said that the debate should be instructive for incoming senators, who attended the meeting before being sworn in.
“This should be a great test case for the future Senate, to think about what different funds can and should be used for and why sometimes it is helpful to have those funds in existence for things that come up that you can’t quite foresee,” he said.
Ben Holston ’15 was sworn in as the 15th ASSU Undergraduate Senate’s chair, Annalis Breed ’16 as deputy chair, and Ryan Matsumoto ’16 as treasurer. The 2013-2014 academic year will mark the first time since 2010 that neither the ASSU Executive nor the ASSU Undergraduate Senate Chair were endorsed by the Students of Color Coalition.