Associated Students President Adam Salgado informed the Senate that he and President-elect Adam Haverstock have agreed not to pay California State Student Association fees for the 2007-08 school year.
CSSA is a government body, created to represent students, that has two members from each of the 23 CSUs, according to A.S. Director of Legislative Affairs Steven Vanover. CSUN, the third-largest CSU, pays some of the highest fees to CSSA annually since the fees are based on the number of students.
Salgado said that the only difference between a school that does not pay dues and one that does is in the capability of voting on the executive board of CSSA.
“It seems like the campuses that don’t pay have the same advocacy power as the ones that pay. Is one vote really worth $20,000?” he asked.
Vanover said that the impact of withholding dues from CSSA would be greater to them than to the CSUN campus.
“It will have a huge impact based on the contribution we make,” he said.
Salgado said the funds that would have gone to CSSA would be transferred to increase the stipends for students involved with A.S.
Before any financial actions were approved at the meeting, Haverstock said that the unallocated reserves had $49,688 available and the academically related reserves had $12,290 available.
Three of the four actions on the agenda were approved, leaving $48,934 available in unallocated reserves and $11,490 available in academically related reserves until June 30.
One action that was passed was for $800 for two students to travel to the Cannes Film Festival. Since the increase of available funds from excess enrollment, previous requests for the Cannes Film Festival had been increased to $1,000 for each person, but the standard allocation of $400 per person in travel expenses was approved by all members of the Senate on Tuesday.
An action for the Black Graduation Committee was postponed until next week as members of the Senate wanted to give additional funding to the event but, according to Attorney General Pablo Murillo, there were no clauses that allowed for additional funding to be granted within the funding guidelines.
“For this particular thing, we cannot go over and beyond that. Your best plan is to plan for the future with the amendment process,” Murillo said.
The action was postponed until next week so that a clause could be introduced and possibly passed by the Senate that would allow the Senate to give additional funding under the newly adopted clause for graduation events.
Director of Elections Leonard Wong had to postpone his action item to have the official election results approved by the Senate due to the adviser from the Matador Involvement Center not being available to authorize the results.
“They’re basically the university presence on our committee. They’re added security that we’re impartial,” he said.
Senator Kimberly Tripeny, who chairs External Affairs, said a condolence letter and signed picture of members of the senate was ready and would be sent to the Virginia Tech campus in response to the shooting that took place on April 16.
Final committee meetings were announced since the semester is nearly finished, and next week will be the last Senate meeting for the semester.
General Manager David Crandall asked members of the Senate to act responsibly in their alcohol consumption during an upcoming banquet for the senate. “It should be a celebration, it is not worth anyone’s life,” he said.
Requests are currently being heard from professors for funding from the Instructionally Related Activities fund board for the upcoming school year. According to Haverstock, the IRA has an annual budget of $1 million. “It always gets completely spent,” he said.
The funding for the IRA comes from a student fee of $15 per semester, and it allows for professors to do projects as an extension of their class curriculum. Roughly 60 professors have submitted requests for the 2007-08 school year.
