By Raena Doty
Editorial Staff
Before the Big Budget meeting scheduled for Feb. 10, SGA held an emergency meeting Feb. 7 to finalize changes to the SGA by-laws.
The changes to the by-laws concerned the classification of organizations and clarity of process for how they request funding from SGA. All changes were made under Article IV, “Funding Regulations for Campus Organizations.”
The changes they voted on were all under Article IV, Section 2 “Criteria for Groups.” This section defines different types of groups across campus, and the category a group belongs to dictates what rules and regulations the group must follow.
Previously, there were five groups. While Groups One, Two, and Three have gone untouched, Group Four has been altered to accommodate a new group being added, and what previously was Group Five has now been renamed Group Six.
In each subsection, the by-law document specifies funding is not the only factor considered when determining classification of an organization.
The emergency meeting comes a few days before the Big Budget meeting, which establishes the budgets of many organizations across campus. The members of SGA will vote on how to allocate funds according to any given organization’s needs for maintaining equipment, providing services to the community, and hosting events.
While the classification of any given organization isn’t dependent on how much money the organization will use, this is a factor.
The Big Budget meeting will allocate the money in the Student Activities Trust Fund.
At the beginning of the meeting, President Dara Barros brought up concerns about the availability of food on campus this past weekend, Feb. 4-5.
She said the closure of the Ram’s Den Grille at approximately 6 p.m. on Saturday is particularly concerning for students considering it’s the only on-campus restaurant open after 7:30 p.m. on weekends. She added students getting back from jobs late or who otherwise aren’t on campus while the Dining Commons was open may not have had access to food.
Sections of the Dining Commons were closed Sunday, Feb. 5 and this was another concern for Barros. She said she used one of her meal swipes, but didn’t end up taking any food because she didn’t want to eat any of the limited options.
She then connected this to the recently announced temporary closure of Dunkin’ in the McCarthy Center for the rest of the week.
While Barros was sympathetic about the reasons for all the closures regardless of whether those reasons were disclosed, she expressed frustration with the lack of explanation given to students about why these closures have been happening.
At the end of the meeting, SGA nominated three people for Senator of the Month for January: Ben Boyer, Liv West, and Austin van Lingen. All three were recognized for putting in extra work when it hadn’t been required of them.
Evelyn Campbell, outreach and events coordinator, also announced she made a TikTok account for SGA, which can be found @fsustudentgov, and discussed plans for keeping SGA on theme for Valentine’s Day.
Finally, Leah Mudd, advisor of SGA, recognized the Senator of the Month for December, Liv West.