This week’s meeting focused on a new proposal which was brought by the Honor and Conduct Boards in regard to their election process.
President Constance Garner, Vice President Jacob Harvey, Treasurer Jessica Darst and the Chairs of both the Honor and Conduct board served as a tri-council to establish a new election process.
The new election process will include the first two weeks of February to act as a nomination process for new members for both Boards.
These nominations will come from students, faculty and staff, and will close on February 13 at 11:59 p.m. Applications will then be sent out to those who have been nominated. On March 1, the Honor and Conduct Boards will then start reviewing the applications to narrow down students to put on the ballot, which will consist of three to four names.
The candidates will then be given a two-week campaign period, which coincides with SGA elections that are open to the student body.
This process will go into effect this year with some time restraints given that February has already past. Those candidates who are seeking to return to the Boards will have different questions on their application.
The SGA approved the motion of the election process for the Honor and Conduct Boards.
Some debate surfaced when Treasurer Darst proposed the budget for the 2016-2017 school year. Some of the tier one organizations such as Lancer Productions, Mortar Board and WMLU were given budget cuts from the budget meeting which took place over the weekend. Representatives from those organizations were in attendance to debate the reason as to why they received cuts.
Lancer Productions was originally deducted $10,000 from their general programming budget from $70,000 to $60,000. The representative suggested to deduct the needed amount from headline speakers totaling at $8,000, and the ‘Snowball’ event that will add the $10,000 originally deducted back into the general programming budget.
A member of SGA suggested that if Lancer Productions was in need of more allocated funds, they should attend the Student Finance Committee (SFC) weekly meetings to ask for those funds.
Mortar Board was originally deducted $10,000 from $75,000 to $65,000 for band compensation for Oktoberfest. The two representatives who were in attendance voiced concern with how the organization was struggling to find the necessary funds for bands this past Oktoberfest.
WMLU received deductions from $76,000 to $66,000 for band payment. The organization is changing their timeframe in which musical acts will go on during Battle of the Bands and Bandfest. They are also looking to have a smaller lineup to accommodate this deduction.
The tier one organizations that did not receive budget cuts were Longwood Ambassadors, Conduct Board, Residential and Commuter Life (RCL), The Rotunda and Student Educators for Active Leadership.
The SGA cannot approve the budget for the 2016-2017 school year until the next SGA meeting.
The motion was approved by the SGA to allocate $1,000 to the SGA for Democracy Day publicity for the debate committee. This will fund buttons and koozees that display the SGA logo.
The constitution of Chi Sigma Iota was passed. The constitution change will allow graduate students to work together on their studies.