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Council approves new rules for finance group
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by Carolyn Potts
Thursday, April 10, 2008
The Associated Students of Madison Student Council approved the new Student Services Finance Committee eligibility rules Wednesday evening.
According to SSFC Chair Alex Gallagher, the redrafted rules have to pass two SC votes in two consecutive meetings and must be passed by the end of the current session to be used in next year’s session.
Gallagher said the group started anew with writing their General Student Service Fund eligibility criteria this year after many debates over the ambiguity of the wording.
He said the rules had only “one criterion that had any real weight to it, and it defined what could get funding by what it wasn’t.” The committee removed the word “service” from the bylaw because the word has been a source of controversy with eligibility hearings in the past.
“We got rid of the word ‘service’ altogether because everyone has their own idea of what service is,” Gallagher said.
According to Gallagher, SSFC has faced problems with eligibility hearings or groups that only cater to small groups of students. The goal of redrafting the eligibility criterion was to make it clear the student groups providing these services must have the intent of impacting all students on campus.
“We had a group that applied [for eligibility] that only focused on graduate students,” Gallagher said. “They said undergrads can attend the events, but if they only advertise to grads and they only work on grad issues, then what incentive is there for an undergrad? We certainly can’t fund every single fraction of the university that wants to provide a service to an internalized thing. The idea is that you provide a service to anyone in the campus community.”
Student Council also voted to create an outreach consultant position for Student Judiciary that will help groups that bring their complaints to SJ move through the system.
“We are creating a position that will be able to facilitate and help groups and organizations that are working their way through the judiciary branch of ASM,” Chief Justice Sol Grosskopf said. “It is a complicated system of bylaws, and if we have a person that these groups can contact with questions I think that would be very effective.”
This position is necessary, Grosskopf said, because justices are excluded from giving opinions to the groups that present to their court.
“A lot of times our hands are tied with how to assist groups,” Grosskopf said. “Hopefully this position will help to show them the best course of action.”
The person who takes this position will be available to help both sides of the case. Grosskopf said the goal of creating this position is to have a person with the capacity and the ability to assist groups.
“We don’t want this to become two lawyers going head-to-head,” Grosskopf said.
Anonymous (April 10, 2008 @ 7:50am):
The SSFC made huge improvements with the new eligibility criteria presented, but they need make further improvements. They still have a criteria that focuses on the views and expressions of the group, and not the nature of the programming.
Also, there is another rule stating that only 75% of the direct services of groups need to go to UW students. This means UW students should only have to pay 75% of their allocable segregated fees at tuition time.
SSFC, you made a good effort. It's now up to the Student Council to make sure that these rules are beneficial to all students, and only students.
Anonymous (April 10, 2008 @ 3:58pm):
SSFC= Setting the Stage for Fiscal Comedy
-Abbott
Anonymous (April 10, 2008 @ 3:58pm):
SJ = Simply Juvenile
-Costello-
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