By a margin of just 8 votes, students approved a measure on the ASUO special election ballot that will give the ASUO Senate more authority over how the EMU Board spends building reserve money.
Students voted 211 to 203 in favor of the measure, which will require the EMU Board to obtain approval from the Senate to spend more than 20 percent of EMU reserve money without budgetary penalty. Building reserve funds, paid for with student incidental fees, are used for maintenance and emergency expenses that arise during the year.
A measure to grant the Programs Finance Committee a one-year exemption to a rule capping major program budget growth at 7 percent per year also passed, 258 to 155.
PFC Chairwoman Mary Elizabeth Madden said without the exemption, it would have been very difficult for PFC to bring additional programs into its budget this year.
“I’m very happy,” she said. “It relieves a lot of stress.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that groups at public universities cannot receive incidental fees by ballot funding. Because of this ruling, University groups that previously went to the ballot for funds plan to take their budget requests to PFC this year, which would greatly increase the PFC’s budget growth.
Programs and services will benefit from the exemption because it will allow PFC to continue funding them without the significant cuts that would have been needed to stay within the 7 percent growth limit, Madden said.
“The winners in this whole thing are going to be student services and programs,” she said.
Both measures affect the Clark Document, a section of the ASUO Constitution that governs student incidental fees.
Just 422 students — less than 3 percent of students enrolled at the University — voted in the special election.
ASUO Elections Coordinator Courtney Hight said she holds herself and other members of the ASUO Elections Board partially responsible for the low turnout, because the election was not widely publicized.
“We definitely recognize that there were things we could have done differently,” she said.
The measures on the ballot may not have interested students because they were complicated, and students might not have seen how the measures would affect them, she said. Technical difficulties on DuckWeb also may have contributed to the low numbers, she added.
Hight said she is focusing on increasing voter turnout for the winter ASUO election, when students will elect ASUO executives and senators for the 2002-03 academic year.
Through increased publicity efforts, she said she plans “to inundate the campus with the election.” Her goal is to raise voter turnout to 20 percent, she said.
ASUO President Nilda Brooklyn said the election was difficult because ASUO sponsored the measures and had to remain neutral.
“I think it was a hard election simply because you couldn’t campaign for it,” she said. “But I’m glad students did vote, and I’m glad the measures passed.”