Council Clippings: Senate decreases Sting Break funding

The GSS discussed, amended and passed a total of three bills at its Tuesday meeting. The first bill proposed to fund Tech Beautification Day, the second proposed to pay for the Student Center Programs Council to bring in another artist for Sting Break and the third proposed to fund the Miss Asian Atlanta Pageant.

The meeting opened with discussion of a bill to provide funding for Tech Beautification Day, which is scheduled to take place on April 22, 2006. The Joint Finance Committee (JFC) struck several small items from the Tech Beautification Day bill, requiring that the organization allocate a lesser amount for posters and use currently available resources for accounting and receipts rather than purchasing an accounting ledger and finance charts.

The JFC also recommended striking lines of the bill related to corporate sponsors on the grounds that money from the corporate sponsors, rather than that from GSS, should be used for communicating with and recognizing corporate sponsors.

After discussion, the senators passed the bill as amended by the JFC.

Following the vote on the Tech Beautification Day bill, discussion moved to this year’s spring concert, Sting Break, for which the Student Center Programs Council requested an additional $40,000 from SGA.

Matt Trinetti, the chair of the Student Center Programs Council concert committee, spoke about the need for the requested funding.

In response to student complaints about the genre of music (hip-hop) offered at last year’s spring concert, the Student Center Programs Council proposed to make this year’s spring concert feature two genres of music.

After booking the hip-hop artist Big Boi, from Outkast, to headline this year’s concert, the council conducted a student survey to use as a basis for selection of a second artist to book for the concert.

Given that last year’s free concert, featuring only one artist, was sold out, one of the senators questioned the wisdom of booking the same 6,000 seat venue as last year.

Trinetti pointed out that this year’s concert would not be free and that this could lead to reduced attendance.

The bill was reduced to $20,000, and the senate added a requirement that the Student Center Programs Council charge Tech students at least $10 and non-students at least $20 before the bill was passed.

A total of $6,898 was requested for the Miss Asian Atlanta Pageant. The senate amended the bill per JFC recommendations and also reduced the decorations budget.

The bill passed as amended for $1,095.65.