The Undergraduate Student Government failed to pass a revised summer budget when it held an emergency senate meeting on Friday evening, June 6.
The revised budget was originally thought to be approved, but after Vice President of Academic Affairs Steven Adelson clarified the voting procedure outlined in the USG constitution, the 6-0-4 vote failed because it did not meet the quorum of two-thirds of the filled senate seats.
The senate voted to make Sen. Luo Luo Fang president pro tempore and also to act as proxy for Executive Vice President James Alrassi, who was unable to attend the Monday, June 9 meeting to vote on the budget again.
The senate passed the budget in a unanimous vote on June 9, but did not have enough voting members to do so until Fang stepped back from her position as president pro tempore to cast a vote as a senator and appointed Adelson as chair of the meeting.
In the past, the two-thirds minimum number of votes needed to pass the budget was determined by the number of those who attended the senate meeting rather than the total number of all senators in general.
Treasurer Kathryn Michaud made revisions to the budget to correct numerical and allocation errors.
The original budget did not include the elimination of executive council stipends, totaling $8,900. Those funds were allocated to other organizations and clubs. Both the executive council and senate stipends are covered by the academic year budget, Adelson said.
The Student Activities Board (SAB) received a $4,500 increase to its summer budget from $12,000 to $16,500, which is less than the funds it received last year.
Last summer, SAB was allocated $18,600, but the board spent $22,000 to put on events for students, Assistant SAB Director Erik Hoerner said. He added that the budget helps because SAB impacts the most students with events.
Hoerner said that the money will be used so students will get the most out of the amount with events such as barbecues that, in the past, were attended by “hundreds of people,” and “expensive” trips to places like Six Flags, for which SAB has to cover park tickets as well as the cost of a bus, which could reach $1,300.
The newly allocated funds “barely reimburse the actual cost of a trip,” Hoerner said Some of the money can flow into the fall for events such as Back to the Brook, Michaud said.
WUSB was originally appropriated $8,500, the same as last summer’s budget. Because it was late with part of its SB Life application, however, WUSB faces a budget cut that, with the addition of a $2,639.30 appropriation, leaves WUSB with a new proposed budget of $6,800, or 80 percent of the original appropriation. It is now up to the club to find the rest of its funds as most other clubs do, Michaud said.
If WUSB overspends its budget for the summer, the excess spending will be deducted from its academic year budget.
As for the remaining funds, $1,000 was placed into a contingency fund that is usually used for legal fees while an additional $120 was allocated to the American Chemical Society after a mistake that originally set its budget at $480, making its revised summer budget $600.
The American Chemical society was to have a $1,200 budget, but received a 50 percent cut for late club registration.
