Council Clippings Senate and House

Tuesday’s Graduate Student Senate meeting opened to a series of four bills from the Lacrosse Club requesting just over $20,000 total.

According to the organization representative, club president Mike Yeager, the team missed last year’s budget submission deadline, and thus had no money allocated to its budget this year. The bills, he said, were requested to compensate for this. He said they were separated by topic, done in part to make it more clear which bills drew from the Prior Year versus Capital Outlay accounts.

Yeager said the 54-member team charges $500 dues and also earns money from alumni. The funds, he said, went toward equipment maintenance, travel and other expenses encountered throughout the year.

The first bill focused on $9,325 worth of operational supplies and expenses. After little discussion, the bill was amended to $7,860 and passed.

The second bill requested $3,000 to help pay for four coaches. However, senator Priyanka Rohatgi questioned Yeager on this number, saying the women’s lacrosse team only had one coach.

“If you see a men and women’s game, they’re almost completely different,” Yeager said. “The only similarity is really the stick and ball.” He said the men’s team required the coaches to focus on specific areas of the game with players.

David Andersen, JFC chair, said, “We can only make recommendations based on policy,” he said, “and we could not make recommendations to cut these because it conforms to policy.”

Still, a motion to amend the bill to $1,500 was quickly carried, and the bill passed soon thereafter.

The third bill asked for for $3,000 of travel expenses for four away games and a tournament; JFC recommended cutting funding for the tournament travel cost since there was no guarantee the team would qualify.

At this point, senator Ed Greco spoke up about the amount of money the bills altogether requested, saying the grads should consider how much they spend on the club.

It was also noted that, according to last year’s budget policy, travel requests would not have been funded if they were included in budgets. Since this was a bill, however, the measure still passed, amended per JFC to $2,310.

The last bill for the club, however, proved to be one too many for the graduates to pass. The bill asked for $5,400 for equipment.

Two points proved to be the bill’s downfall. Greco pointed out that funding everything they had thus far and this bill would essentially give the team its entire budget, despite the late request. There should be some penalty, he said, for coming to the SGA late with their budget. He again added that they fundraise plenty of money to cover some of these expenses.

Senator Karen Feigh added that the equipment requested, which included helmets and pads, seemed like personal equipment that members should purchase.

As such, the bill was amended to $0 and passed.

The senators also amended a $265 bill for a Chinese Student Association mixer to $0 and passed it, due to the lack of organization fundraising. Another bill for about $10,000 for TEAM Buzz was passed after changing some lines to indicate funding from the Capital Outlay account.