In a meeting Monday, members from a branch of student government approved two budgets for student organizations in their eligibility hearings.
Associated Students of Madison’s Student Services Finance Committee approved the budget eligibility of Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment and the Student Leadership Program at the meeting.
Regarding PAVE’s eligibility, Rep. David Vines said he thinks PAVE has made it clear that the main beneficiaries of their programs are almost exclusively university students.
“They educate not just only freshman, only men or only women. They clearly do trainings and seminars targeting everyone in the university,” Vines said.
SSFC Rep. Kyle Quagliana said the fact PAVE’s programs can be tailored and they are organized to be peer-to-peer makes them different from anything else UW has to offer.
Some concerns were raised regarding whether or not PAVE’s reference library should be included in the organizations direct service hours, but members agreed the amount of time is negligible and that they provide enough other services to meet direct service requirements.
Regarding SLP’s eligibility, Rep. Richard Rolland said their programs directly benefit UW students.
“They have shown [SLPs direct service] is requestable and tailorable and they reach out to all of the student body,” Rolland said.
Some concerns were raised by SSFC representatives regarding SLP, including planning time and some specific programming in their direct service hours, but members agreed even without these calculated into the total, SLP met direct service requirements.
SSFC Chair Ellie Bruecker said it is required that SSFC has eligibility decisions be first open to debate and then be voted on.
Bruecker said because the debate is up to members’ individual interpretations, there is a value in hearing what other people have to say.
She added that the eligibility decisions SSFC makes provides something tangible to the UW campus. She said ASM has an important role to play, as students are involved in making decisions to things on campus that are accessible to anybody.
Bruecker said SSFC members prepare for meetings of eligibility decisions by doing things like speaking or meeting with individual groups and coming with questions already prepared.
“It was evident that everyone was well prepared today,” she added.
Both the eligibility decisions for PAVE and SLP were approved by a vote of 11 in favor for each. For both decisions, three members abstained and no members voted against either organization’s eligibility.
Bruecker said next week, SSFC will discuss the eligibility of budgets for Campus Women’s Center and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztl?n, known as MEChA.
Prior to the debate of eligibility discussion, Rep. Jeremy Levinger was recognized as a new member of SSFC. Levinger was not sworn in because he is already a member of ASM.
Near the end of the meeting, SSFC Vice Chair Joe Vanden Avond talked about his Letter to the Editor submitted regarding UW students’ segregated fees.
Vanden Avond said he received feedback from a more than a dozen people and added that hopefully ASM can continue to spread the word regarding changes to segregated fees.
