SGA speeds through funding bills
Usually, funding bills for Student Government Association must go through a two-meeting process – introduction during the first and approval during the second. Sometimes it is a one-meeting process if senators consider the bill “of a timely nature,” which allows funding requests to help organizations meet deadlines.
Last week SGA received some scrutiny from senators for speeding through multiple funding bills in one meeting.
SGA Programming Chair Sean McLemore worries about this becoming the norm and overused rather than the exception.
“It’s essentially kind of suspending the rules,” he said.
Three out of seven bills involving financing introduced Wednesday were considered “of a timely nature” and were passed unanimously Wednesday.
“I don’t want to get in the habit of (this) and pass it through real fast,” McLemore said. “That’s not the purpose of things.”
Several bills were considered of a timely nature, but one got postponed. This means that no vote was taken regarding the bill, instead the vote was delayed until next Wednesday’s meeting.
SGA Treasurer Tessie Arambula did not understand the delay.
“What I don’t understand is how it can be requests like this that can be this scrupulous,” Arambula said. “It’s a black and white request.”
Arambula, who missed the majority of the meeting due to class, said this probably happened because she wasn’t there to deflect the Senate members’ concerns.
“It sounds like it was just confusion and they weren’t able to ask me because I was in class,” Arambula said.
“It was tension building on tension,” SGA Senator Matt Conklin said. “It’s like a stampede.”
Although one bill was put off until Wednesday, the Senate passed four others. The bills went to fund the Society of Human Resources Management, Wichita State Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the American Choral Directors Association, the Society of Women Engineers, the WSU Music Teachers Association, the Graphic Design Organization, an SGA picnic table project, and the WSU Dance Team. The total was $13,588.
