UHR stops SAF policy short

The Student Activity Fee (SAF), the replacement of the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) policy, passed the Graduate Student Senate (GSS) but failed in the Undergraduate House of Representatives (UHR). In the senate, the bill passed by a vote of 26-2-2, but the bill only received three positive votes in the house making it impossible for the bill to go into effect.

The SAF policy has been a hot button issue between the senate and the house all year, spending most of the time in a conference committee to come up with a compromise that would make both chambers of the Student Government happy. The bill resolving to enact the SAF policy left the conference committee last week and was placed on the agenda of both houses to be voted on.

The mirror opposites of the vote totals brings back the differences between the two chambers of the SGA. Last year, the budget dispute between the chambers led to the SGA nearly not passing a budget which would have meant that no organization on campus would have gotten the funding that they deserved.

While both chambers of the SGA passed the budget, the SAF policy renewed the arguments between the two chambers at the close of the school year.

"I am obviously disappointed that the UHR chose to reject nearly a year and a half worth of work on the part of many individuals on our campus," said Mitch Keller, graduate SGA president.

"The reasons are complicated. It seems that some members of the UHR felt that the new policy would force them to give up authority, while the intent of the policy's standards for allocations that did not follow the policy was simply to require a higher standard than usual for making exceptions," Keller said.

According to Brock Wester, coordinating officer and graduate SGA president-elect, the reason that the bill failed the house was because of the language used to establish the new enactment ratio.

The point of contention in the enactment ratio was that the ratio was being raised to prevent the house from being able to pass a bill no matter what happened in the senate. As Wester put it, the new enactment ratio was trying to force a simple majority to occur in both chambers to pass a bill.

Currently, a bill can fail in the senate and then pass the house, and if it passes by a large enough margin, the bill will pass overall if the two versions of the bill are exactly the same. If they are not exactly the same, the bill goes to a conference committee.

The SAF policy was sparked by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) lawsuit against Tech. SGA felt that it was necessary to change the JFC policy to make the funding process clearer to organizations requesting money.

With the failure of the SAF policy, the JFC policy stays in effect until the JFC meets in the fall to revise its policy. Until then, organizations have to rely on the same policy to determine whether or not they can request certain moneys or not.

"I would encourage members of student organizations to contact their SGA leaders to urge them to adopt the policy early in the fall semester to provide greater clarity and consistency for organizations," Keller said.

According to Wester, getting a new SAF policy introduced and passed will be one of his top priorities in the fall.