Council Clippings: House passes fee resolution

The Undergraduate House of Representatives (UHR) met Tuesday Jan. 23. Two bills were passed and two were failed.

The first bill brought before the house was the joint allocation to the Women's Soccer Club. The organization was asking for funds to buy new home and away jerseys for the team. According to the organizational representative, the current jerseys out date all of the players on the roster, which means they are at least four years old.

The Joint Finance Committee (JFC) recommended striking socks from the bill because socks are a personal item and would not stay with the team after the player left and, therefore, could not be funded by SGA.

The bill was amended in accordance with the JFC recommendation and passed the house.

The second bill brought before the house was the joint allocation to the Chinese Friendship Association. The organization was asking for funds to throw its Chinese New Year gala in the Ferst Center. The organization was using the SGA as its only source of funding and was not charging admission to the event. The JFC recommended strike several lines from the bill down to a total of 6440.50 dollars from the prior year account. The bill was amended according to the JFC recommendation, but failed the house by a vote of 11-22-1. The bill was passed in the Graduate Student Senate by a vote of 11-8-2. Because both chambers of SGA voted on the same version of the bill, the bill did not go to a conference committee. Due to the enactment ratio, the bill overall failed to pass SGA.

The next bill brought before the house was the resolution for articles of impeachment. Perrin Quarshie, a representative for Civil Engineering, had six absences last semester. Two of the absences were due to a car accident that he experienced. The vote on the bill was not a vote whether or not to impeach Quarshie, but whether or not to hold an impeachment hearing. The vote was 20-13-1 in favor of holding a hearing, which according to a simple majority would have passed. The hearing was started, but stopped when the bylaws were referenced and it was discovered that it takes a three-fifths vote to pass an impeachment bill. Since the vote did not meet the three-fifths ratio, the bill was subsequently failed.

The last bill brought before the house was the resolution concerning the Athletic fee. The resolution initially stated that the house urged the undergraduate members of the Mandatory Student Fee Allocation Committee to vote for either proposal or to vote for neither. The resolution was amended to urge the undergraduates to solely vote for the first proposal made by the Athletic Association to raise the Athletic fee by 96 dollars.