Session of March 18th, 2021
March 18, 2021
Minutes Recorded by: McKenzie Craycraft, Secretary
Visitors: Steve Conn, Alex Place, Stephen Foster, Riley Wishon, Jeff Rosinbaum, Abbie Turner
Call to Order at 11:05 AM
Senator Moyes prays
Roll Called
Approval of Minutes
Minutes approved at 11:09 AM
Officer Reports
PPT LaQuey: Good morning, we are passed the halfway mark of this semester, you need to start thinkingabout replacements if you are graduating, things will get busier in life, keep that in mind when planning. Is everyone getting notifications from discord? I want to be available if anyone has questions about communicating with the floor. Often times when we have sessions that aren’t as busy, we will have people come in and talk to us. If you know of anyone who is interested in speaking, let me know. Last thing, I snapped at a few of you for not voting on a motion, thankfully it did not mean anything, I am sorry for snapping at you. Make sure you are considering things well. Keep up the good work.
Committee Reports
Senator Anderson: FAC, I have appointed a cochair, senator Allen, senator Eaton will be spending oversight, in terms of south field funding we have discussed it. We are working on getting a bill prepared to create a subcommittee, to handle the repairs.
Senator Dittman: GoPro, we finished all the counting the week before hand, we realized we were able to tally up all votes regardless of the ones that were emailed, or if we did weird fractions, we still have clear winners. The president is Joe Ryan, VP is Avent, Joseph Wang is LSM, YAK is Blake Everett.
Chairman Willis: Student life committee, I am sure you are aware of the thank you project. We have completed all the shopping for that, it is going to be a great thank you bag. We have also fixed the ice cream cart finally. I have two announcements I will bring up later. I will need some volunteers tomorrow. It won’t be anything too difficult.
Special Business
VP Murphy: STING will present before we bring up the bill.
STING Presentation
Senator Avent: Do you know the results of the ground results?
Citizen Rosinbaum: We have not gotten them back yet.
PPT LaQuey: What is your overall budget look like in a normal year?
Citizen Rosinbaum: I am not the financial advisor on our team, but I will get back to you. The $1,000 is calculated. It accounts for the lack of expenditure.
Senator Anderson: Point of clarification, the STING budget is in the drive under clubs. I believe I shared it. I could be wrong. I do have the $1,000 in the bill. That has been communicated.
Chairman Willis: Point of further clarification, you did tell us that.
Old Business
None
New Business
Senator Allen: I motion to bring STING Sponsorship Bill of Spring 2021 to the floor
Approved
Senator Willis: Motion to bring bill to a vote
Approved
Bill approved
Chairman Willis: Motion to bring Game Table Bill of Spring 2021 to the floor
Approved
Senator Moyes: On behalf of my floor, what about the people who already have tables?
Chairman Willis: Some floors do have good tables; this bill is inspired by a floor in Thomas who bought one. This bill could be brought up as a need arises. Game tables don’t last forever. For those who alreadyhave the tables, we cannot do much.
Senator Moyes: Can we explain section B part 2. How does that relate in section C?
Chairman Willis: It says “if approved through the process” which relates to part 4. That included the student life committee. In particular if someone wants to buy a $500 ping pong table that gives Kool-Aid, but everyone else wants something more moderate.
Senator Anderson: How many floors are there on campus? & I want to get an idea about the possibility about knowing the size of the budget.
VP Murphy: There are 27 floors
Chairman Willis: In regard to the funding, this includes seeing what we need, it is worth mentioning, a maximum amount will be determined by you. We cannot cover more than a specific amount. RAs are able to use their floor funds, and they could help cover. They could do some fundraising.
Senator Avent: I have a few questions regarding the structure, the appropriations seem to allocate an unclear amount of money. If this bill was put in action, we would need to appropriate an amount to come back.
Senator Eaton: The bill specially mentioned floors and commuters and apartments, does this include houses?
VP Murphy: Houses are counted as a floor.
Senator Anderson: With 30 floors, supposing a $200 maximum, that would be a $6,000 allocation. That does not mean we use that whole amount, my recommendation, would be a partial sponsor if a floor so desires. We could cut that cost down and sponsor to $100 and would be a $3,000 allocation.
VP Murphy: Point of clarification, that is what this bill is supposed to do. I believe we are not buying it out right. We are assisting them.
Chairman Willis: That is correct, we are refunding a part of this. If all 30 floors have a combined need and want. That is why it worded this way. Like PPT LaQuey said we have a lot of money left. Statistically over 56% of students have said floor/dorm culture is very important. Even though we cannot host bigevents, we could still do something. As senator Avent said the appropriations section could use some reworking. We can amend this in the future.
VP Murphy: 8 minutes left
Senator Rubingh: How will you change the amount for floors that have less funding, a lot of Tyler has less funding by 1/5 when compared to Thomas
Senator Anderson: I was just going to motion and amendment to have an appropriations section of $3,000.
PPT LaQuey: You can clarify before some seconds.
Senator Anderson: I motion to amend the bill under appropriations section B, I would like to amend a subpoint 3 to 3,000 will be allocated as the total fund for this bill. The total appropriations for this fund
VP Murphy: I could recommend we table this, and fi it later, that might be useful.
Chairman Willis: Motion to have committees work on this as appropriations
VP Murphy: All in favor of student life, FAC and PR&R working on this?
Approved
Chairman Willis: Motion to table until next session
Approved
Announcements
Chairman Willis: Ice cream is happening, we only had two people show up, considering we have so many people. If you can come at 3:10 to just help or just 4:30 to help. Also, we are having an event while we put together gift baskets. Please check the discord for info on that
Senator Hofer: Where do we meet?
Chairman Willis: People are usually between the catering kitchen, or the storage, second floor of ASC.
Senator Gonzalez: We are going to make next week picture week.
Open Forum
Senator Avent: Motion to adjourn
Senator Gonzalez: second
Call for a division of the house
All in favor: 14
All against 6
Meeting Adjourned at 11:48 AM