BY MELISSA SOLANO
Staff Writer
Franciscan University’s Student Government passed three bills at their weekly meeting on Wednesday – one with much debate.
This week’s meeting began with the swearing in of the newest and final freshman senator, Ben Idzick.
Secretary Gargulinski reported that due to some money allocated to the month of September being left over, the contingency fund increased to $12,207.87.
There were three bills on the table during this meeting.
Fall Bill 16 sparked some debate amongst the Senate. The bill originally called for $2,480.00 to go to the Graduate Counseling Association to help fund a planned trip to the Catholic Psychotherapy Conference.
The Graduate Counseling Association (GCA) aims to promote community and academic opportunities for graduate students who are counseling majors.
The senate debated back and forth and had to motion to extend allowed debate time twice. Many felt that the proposed amount was far too high to be given to a single club in one sum so early in the year.
David Schmiesing, the student government adviser, was asked his opinion on the matter due to the large amount as well as the fact that Student Life does not officially recognize the GCA as a campus club. He dismissed the latter, stating that Student Government reserves the right to debate the allocation of money to any group or individuals, adding also that the GCA is considered an academic club.
Senator Bassinger called to table the bill for the following week’s meeting, but this motion was dismissed due to the timeliness of the matter.
GCA president Liz Hevertz, advised that it would be better for club members to have time to plan accordingly depending on the outcome of the bill.
Senate debate ran into the end of the meeting, and vice president Foldi was forced to call an end the debate and call the senate to a decision.
The final bill that was passed reduced the original amount down to $1,580.00 to be allocated to the club. This money will cover 80 percent of registration fees and some lodging fees. The club will now be responsible to pay for their own food, transportation, and other leftover fees out-of-pocket.
Fall Bill 14 was amended to read as a re-allocation of funds from money for hotels/speakers to social events for the Anscombe Society.
The Anscombe Society is planning on sponsoring a talk and required $118.96 for food for their event. This bill was passed unanimously.
Fall Bill 15 called for a re-allocation of $250 from clinic outreach to go toward activity/booklet material for Students for Life.
They plan to use the funds to produce more workbooks for the training of their core team this year. This bill was passed unanimously.
At the close of the meeting, Schmiesing gave his adviser’s comments. He said the debate over the GCA Bill was one of the best he had seen in Student Government in almost 10 years, and congratulated them on work well done.