After more than two hours of debate last night in a room filled with students, Georgetown University Student Association passed funding reform legislation that will fundamentally alter the current funding process for student clubs.
Under the new legislation, the five advisory boards and the Georgetown Program Board, which sat on the original Funding Board, will lose their power to vote on the budget, effective immediately. The boards will now independently draft the budget and send it to the GUSA Finance and Appropriations Committee to be voted on. If the budget is passed by two-thirds of the committee, it must then also receive approval by two-thirds of the GUSA senate. Following senate approval, the GUSA president has the power to veto the budget, with the possibility of a senate override. The Funding Board structure is abolished under the legislation.
Before passing the vote, the senate voted to pass two amendments to the bill.
The first, which was introduced by Sen. Matthew Hoyt (COL ’12), changed the legislation to make the vice president for student affairs or his or her designee a non-voting adviser to the Finance and Appropriations Committee.
The second, introduced by Adam Mortillaro (COL ’12), requires that all senators on the Finance and Appropriations Committee attend an informational session on the funding process.
ortillaro had introduced a third, last-minute, handwritten amendment that laid out an appeals process, but it was tabled following comments from other senators that the process of appeals needed to be more carefully considered.
There was an appeal from Arman Ismail (COL ’11), a GUSA presidential candidate, to table the bill, but it was voted down by the senate after many senators said that there had already been enough time for outside consideration of the bill, which was introduced in early December.
“I’m uncomfortable voting on this bill, but it’s been out since December. I think we need to accept that it’s an uncomfortable bill that some people are going to oppose and some people are going to support,” senate Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12) said.
Some senators, including Sens. Yasmin Serrato (SFS ’13) and Chetan Panda (SFS’ 13), expressed apprehension at the senate having such a degree of control over the budget, because they thought they, as freshman senators, were not informed enough about the funding process.
Sen. Nick Troiano (COL ’11) said that it was important for senators to remain informed about the funding process, but that this was not a part of the bill.
“It should come with the job that you get informed,” Troiano said. “It is in [GUSA’s] interest for [senators] to get informed.”
Talbot said the debate carried undertones of wariness of conspiracy. Citing an editorial by The Georgetown Voice opposing the legislation due to worries of infiltration of the GUSA senate by club heads, Talbot then expressed to the senate how difficult the conspiracy would be to execute.
Clara Gustafson (SFS ’13) said that some of her constituents were concerned that the senate was making such a major change, when most of the concern was directed toward the Student Activities Commission, one of the five advisory boards along with Georgetown Program Board, that would be subjected to GUSA approval before allocating funding.
“I think that we do need to have a better relationship between GUSA and the advisory boards. We’re all on the same team here,” Troiano said.
Former Finance and Appropriations chair Matt Wagner (SFS ’11) sat in as the proxy for Serrato when she left halfway through the meeting. He used his position as proxy to object to holding the vote because, according to him, other options had not been fully considered.
“If an option was put in front of the senate that was different than this bill, I think the senate would support whatever change was put in front of it, given that it was as thoroughly researched and worked on as this bill,” Wagner said.
Troiano said that Wagner was trying to push his own agenda in his campaign for running for GUSA president, a comment that roused applause from a few senators.
After the bill passed with 19 votes for and four against, many senators clapped and cheered.
“I’ve been a senator for three years, two of those on the Finance and Appropriations Committee. I’ve seen this is a flawed system. This is a bill we’ve been working on for years, literally,” said George Roche (COL ’10), a member of the Finance and Appropriations Committee, who voted for the bill.
Kate Petersen (COL ’11) and Yasin Yaqubie (COL ’11) were also confirmed as GUSA Fund members during the meeting.
Corrections: This article originally stated that the five advisory boards work with the GUSA Executive to draft a budget. The boards work completely independently to draft their budget. The article also originally stated that the budget would need to be passed unanimously by the GUSA Finance and Appropriations Committee and the GUSA senate; however, the budget only needs two-thirds approval from both bodies. The article originally reported that Kate Peterson (COL ’11) and Yasin Yaqubie (COL ’11) were confirmed as GUSA commissioners; they were confirmed as GUSA Fund members.”
