The Student Government Association Undergraduate Student Congress passed two bills relating to student organizations’ funding that generated debate on the amount of funding multicultural organizations received, and they nominated members for numerous administrative positions Tuesday.
Budget Committee Chair Lauren Patton presented a bill appropriating SGA funds to governmental student organizations at OU, including Campus Activities Council, SGA Undergraduate Student Congress, SGA Graduate Student Senate, the SGA Executive Branch and Student Bar Association.
Some congress members questioned why CAC received an increase in funding this year. Patton explained CAC had “unfairly” received a cut last year due to budget restrictions.
“We were able to work with them — they knew (they would be) going into primary (funding) last year and supplemented during auxiliary (funding) at the beginning of this year, but we wanted to return them more to what they were supposed to be getting all along,” Patton said. “So, it's not actually an increase, it's a decrease from two years ago, but it's closer to what the amount they should be getting is.”
SGA primary funding occurs once a year and covers a range of supplies organizations need money for. The money is deposited in August and can be used throughout the school year, Congress Vice Chair Alexis Marvin explained. She said this type of funding has more restrictions and rules for those who are applying.
Auxiliary funding has less restrictions, and organizations can apply throughout the school year, Marvin said.
Patton said during the 2017-18 academic year, CAC received $160,000, but with the growth of other organizations and budget restraint, SGA “unfairly” decreased CAC to $136,000. She added CAC’s funding had to be decreased to $132,000 last year to ensure other organizations were receiving the funding they needed throughout the pandemic.
“We’re increasing them back to $137,000, which is just $1,000 over $136,000, so it's not genuinely an increase,” Patton said. “(It is) still less than what they should have been getting, because they've never spent less than 100 percent. It's technically an increase, but it's still a decrease from what they were receiving previously.”
The bill passed with a final roll call vote of 18-12-0.
Patton presented another bill which appropriated SGA funds to registered student organizations, including a few of campus’s larger multicultural organizations. This bill generated more debate in the body.
The bill assigned funds to student organizations including the Asian American Student Association, Hispanic American Student Association, American Indian Student Association, Black Student Association and Colombian Student Association.
Several congress members, as well as leaders of the Asian American Student Association and the Hispanic American Student Association, questioned the amount of funding they received. Some congress representatives and multicultural organization members said the groups received “very large proportional decreases” in their funding compared to last year.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and their groups’ importance on campus, organization members called on SGA to reassess the funding allocated to each organization.
Patton said the budget committee felt $10,000 was sufficient for the primary funding needs of campus multicultural organizations.
“They should supplement through (auxiliary funding) as a lot of these other multicultural organizations do, because we want them to get that money,” Patton said. “Further, that is why I'm going to be going forward advocating that we get more of the student activity fee, because I don't like seeing that we're not able to give these multicultural organizations and other large organizations on campus the increases they deserve.”
Patton said the organizations’ fiscal history and the challenges of the pandemic influenced the amount of funding they received this year.
Patton explained fiscal history is important as it assesses an organization's spending. She said as long as it's spent with an allowable list and approved, the committee doesn’t “specifically care what it's spent on.”
“That's part of us being unbiased. We don't look at the merit of an organization, we just look at how big they are and if they're doing what the organization is setting out to do,” Patton said. “The reason this is important is because if we're giving an organization $5,000 every year, and they're only spending $2,000 of it, then that's $3,000 that could be going to other organizations. Especially with primary (funding) fiscally confined, we want to make sure that we're giving all of the money to people who will be spending it, because we can't give all the money we want to everybody.”
Shihui Liu, president of the Asian American Student Association, said the organization has grown in recent years and is in need of more funding than it has received in the past.
“Our organization has increased tremendously. ... Additionally, we're trying to do a lot more Asian American activism things on campus (regarding) the recent rise in hate crimes and anti-Asian violence on our campus, and also all across America,” Liu said. “With this funding decrease, we're not able to do a lot of our events, and all of our funding has been decreased. So, if we're getting the same money but we're getting more people, we're not able to put on the same level of events, even though all of our events are open to the public. We're not going to be able to be recognized as much as other multicultural student organizations.”
Enrique Juarez, president of the Hispanic American Student Association, said it is important to take into account the growth of Latinx students on campus when considering funding for the organization.
“This is a community that is growing and is new to this campus, (and) that (has) such large numbers now,” Juarez said. “In order to reach these numbers, I feel like it's necessary to accommodate these people (in) our community and to put on events to create a safe community and a safe space here at the university.”
After several more questions, the body moved to enter formal debate.
Associate Rebecca Yanez, an opponent of the bill’s passage, said it was “ridiculous” other organizations were allowed to increase their budgets by $1,000 while appropriations to other large multicultural organizations like AASA remained stagnant.
Associate Kyle Morse, a proponent of the bill, said most of the organizations mentioned in the meeting received the same funding as the year prior.
During her author speech defending the bill, Patton acknowledged funding stagnancy for multicultural organizations but explained it’s because of a “constrained budget.”
Patton said arguing over whether or not CAC should have gotten the increase over other organizations is biased and veers into judging the merit of an organization, which the congress may not consider. According to Marvin, the Ways and Means Committee cannot choose what organization gets funding based on merit.
“If we're looking at specifically the things we go through as we try to remain unbiased in our decisions, CAC does have a larger scope and does have better fiscal right, so that's not an argument to say that I don't want to give other organizations more money,” Patton said. “But it's not fair, as an outsider, to pit two organizations against each other.”
The bill passed with a final roll call vote of 17-12-0.
In the evening’s second meeting section, Congress swore in 13 new members who won their districts in the SGA April 6-7 elections.
In those elections, Kobe Chen was also elected as CAC chair with 94.7 percent of the votes, while Tyler Self was elected as Student Bar Association President with 94.4 percent of the votes.
During the meeting, Crispin South was nominated Chair of Congress, Sidney May as Vice Chair of Congress and Coy Taylor as the Secretary of Congress.
The body also saw the "Congressional Member List Oversight Act of 2021," which requires the SGA Secretary to create a monthly member list to oversee the members in the body and keep track of membership consistently.
Secretary Emily Tucker, the author of the bill, said she usually updates congressional member lists whenever there is a change in the body, such as the resignation of a congress member. The bill passed with a final roll call vote of 31-0-0.
Congress also saw the “Constituent Recommended Initiative & Student Petition Act of 2021,” which reorganized and reformed petitioning procedures and regulations within the SGA code annotated.
The adjustments will allow for the submission of general petitions, establish a verified petitioning platform and alter responsibilities within the executive branch with regard to petition procedures and response, as stated in the congress agenda.
Chair Crispin South, author of the bill, said last semester's pass/no pass bill inspired him to write the legislation.
"The fact that it was a (Change.org) petition coming from unverified people who may or may not actually be OU students was kind of a worrisome aspect of that petition for a lot of people (who) were questioning its validity as a tool of democracy," South said.
The bill passed with a final roll call vote of 31-0-0.
Next, Congress saw the “Auxiliary Allocation 14 Act of 2020-2021,” which appropriated SGA funds to student organizations. In this bill, funds were allocated to the OU Equestrian Club and Psychology Graduate Student Association.
It passed with a final roll call vote of 31-0-0.
As decorum had to be called sometimes during the meeting, Marvin urged congress members to continue to be respectful to guests and members who work within the body.
“Please do not ever react or ever say anything during the time of vote that would cause anybody to change their votes. That is undemocratic and goes completely against what we are trying to do in this body,” Marvin said. “I think we in our body do a lot. I think we say a lot of things that we want to do better, but when we're trying to put it into action we fail terribly — and I've been in this body for three years and I've only seen it go worse.”
