USS delays vote on task force funding

Sara Macho

The Undergraduate Student Senate decided last week to postpone voting on automatic block funding for the May 4 Task Force.

The USS will discuss the May 4 Task Force Bill further during the Allocation Committee’s Ad Hoc process, which is scheduled for sometime in April.

If passed on Friday, the bill would remove the task force’s block funding of roughly $10,000, or 1.75 percent of student activity fees. The organization uses this money towards May 4 commemoration activities. If the task force uses all the allotted funding, it can request more from the Allocations Committee.

The task force should go through the same process as every other student organization when planning events, said Kevin Folk, Undergraduate Student Senate business and finance senator.

“The purpose of the task force bill is to make sure everyone plays by the same rules,” he said. “No one student organization is above any other.”

If the bill is passed, it could cause the task force to reschedule events it had been planning since summer, said Sarah Goldstein, a past president of the task force.

“At this point in the year, we have to set up a schedule that we’d have to adjust,” she said.

The USS represents all students and not just a few student organizations or one in particular, USS executive director William Ross said.

“I cannot stress the importance of listening to all the undergraduate students and not just one student organization over any other,” he said. “We must treat all student organizations the same.”

The extra time will give students and organizations more time to voice opinions and concerns, Folk said.

“This a better avenue,” he said. “It gives us extra time.”

Currently, every student organization needs to bring its request for an event to the Allocations Committee. Each year, the senator for business and finance chairs the Ad Hoc Committee and reviews the guidelines from the year.

Contact student politics reporter Sara Macho at [email protected].