The ASUO Student Senate on Wednesday passed about $1.3 million for the committee that bargains with the Athletics Department to buy student tickets to sports games for next year, approving a budget designed to address two past problem areas for the committee.
A 3.11 percent decrease from last year, the budget falls below the 5.3 percent increase limit set by the Senate for the Athletic Department
Finance Committee.
For the first time, the budget will bring the committee in fulfillment of a contract stipulation requiring students to fund 50 percent of the fair market value of sports tickets, ADFC Chairman Kevin Day said. He said the budget also addresses the “no-show factor” — students who receive tickets to games but don’t use them.
Students will lose 400 seats at home football games and 300 seats at men’s basketball games because of changes to the contract. Day said that will help address the no-show problem.
He added that the draft of the contract includes a stipulation that if the no-show average is below 5 percent of student tickets for two years, the ADFC will redress the number of tickets. The proposed contract would also stipulate that students must receive 2,300 seats in the University’s new basketball stadium, which could be built in four years “if everything goes right,” Day said.
The ADFC’s contract with the
department will be signed later in the spring, ADFC member Jack
Crocifisso said.
ASUO Vice President Mena Ravassipour said the ASUO Executive was in “full support” of the budget. Although Senator Barett Volkmann spoke out against a reduction in seats, several senators commended committee members for presenting a budget below benchmark.
“They’ve essentially done everything we could have ever wanted and more,” Senator Austin
Shaw-Phillips said.
But Senator Stephanie Stoll questioned whether meeting 50 percent this year when students are losing seats would set a precedent for future years when it might be harder to meet the 50 percent clause.
Day said future budgets depend partly on the department’s ticket prices, which have increased by about 3 percent in past years.
“We’re kind of at their will,” he said. “It’s kind of up to the scheduling gods and their prices.”
Also at the meeting, Senator Michael Watson, a law student, announced that the Senate plans to introduce a resolution next week condemning the ASUO Constitution Court’s decision to place an injunction against Senator and Programs Finance
Committee member Eden Cortez.
Since then, Cortez, who was among three PFC members who received injunctions last week after a representative of the Oregon Commentator filed petitions with the court alleging misconduct, has been excluded from voting on any budget matters at Senate and PFC meetings.
Watson, who said he is “not entirely familiar with the controversy,” said the resolution was not submitted Wednesday because of formatting issues.
A draft of the resolution obtained Wednesday by the Emerald states that “the Chief Justice of the ASUO Constitutional (sic) Court has usurped the Court’s constitutionally derived judicial authority by enjoining ASUO Senator Eden Cortez and Program Finance Committee (sic) (PFC) Members Dan Kieffer and Mason Quiroz from fulfilling their constitutional obligations as political officers of the University of Oregon student body.”
Watson said injunctions usually
focus “precisely on one problem
at hand” and the injunctions
were “unusual.”
He said the decision is a “separation-of-powers issue” because legislative bodies usually regulate themselves. He added that PFC members “are not mere ministers” of funds and that the PFC process is meant to be deliberative.
“I think this is a bad precedent” to set, Watson said.
The Senate also approved a request by the EMU Board of Directors to submit its budget a week later than planned because of new information presented to its budget committee that needs to be discussed.
Budget decreases available athletic tickets for students
Daily Emerald
February 17, 2005
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