Special requests including a $9,545 request from the ASUO Office for the purchase of six new computers and money for food for an event put on by the Young Americans for Liberty were hot topics at the first ASUO senate of 2015.
Members of Senate were concerned that provision for this kind of maintenance has not been included in the ASUO Office budget and administration doesn’t provide funding for it. The request passed and the ASUO Office hopes to account for the cost of equipment in a line item in the future.
The UO NAfME Collegiate, which is the UO chapter of the National Association for Music Educators were among attendance. NAfME requested nearly $10,000 to send students to three music conferences. Two of the conferences are national and one is regional. The representatives who came to speak before Senate cited conferences as networking opportunities and also, chances to spread word about the music programs at the UO.
Senator Sami Tayeh was in favor of granting the entire request and said that without attending conferences such as these, “No one’s going to know us.”
Senators like Andrew Lubash and Miles Sisk were concerned with fundraising efforts, however.
Because the group’s request was for conference expenses, according to Senate rules, the ASUO could only fund half, and the rest of the cost should be covered by fundraising. This can only be overruled by a two-thirds majority vote.
The group then proposed cutting some of the money from the request and paying for items like travel costs themselves. Senators also discussed the possibility of splitting up the requests to account for each individual conference. However, those changes coupled with cutting the transportation costs and dividing up the fundraised money among the three conferences required a great deal of recalculation and, after a half hour of debate, Senate passed a motion to table to the request until next week.
Following that debate, the Citizens United Resolution was next on the agenda. In 2013, Oregon became the 16th state to adopt a resolution requesting Congress to nullify the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. The resolution presented to the Senate was more of a symbolic gesture of support for the movement opposed to Citizens United. Senate voted to pass the resolution.
At the end of the meeting, Ombudsperson Samantha Cohen reminded senators to be present for all of their ASUO commitments as possible.
“I want to remind folks that you have an obligation, self care, family emergencies, academic and ASUO comes second, but everything else comes third…Grievances are public and they’re not fun, so do your job,” Cohen said.
In the treasurer update, Senator Iversen reported that 68.7 percent of surplus remains.
Fore more information on the ASUO, visit their website.