At its meeting last Tuesday, USGA’s Senate approved the budget for the 2023-24 school year. The Senate also passed a resolution requesting additional microwaves on campus and a bill expanding its authority to approve new positions created by the executive branch.
The budget, which can be viewed in its entirety at this link, breaks down money allocated to each member, department, and fund under USGA. It also lists every student organization that requested funds, how much each organization requested, and how much each organization was allocated.
Registered student organizations (RSOs) received a combined total of $26,250. RSOs on average received 44.98% of the funds they requested. 73 members of the student government were compensated a total of $16,860, at an average of $231 per member.
Senators next passed a resolution requesting that UAB Dining install additional microwaves on campus, namely at the Hill Student Center. The resolution faced numerous hurdles before reaching the Senate floor. “What [UAB Dining] has said is it’s a matter of actually implementing it and working around electricity and making electrical adjustments,” said Harrison Strong, the sophomore neuroscience major who authored the resolution. The resolution passed unanimously.
Senators then opened discussion of a bill that would authorize the Senate to formally approve or deny the yearly budget. Historically, the Senate’s approval or denial of the yearly budget was only symbolic in nature, serving only as an affirmation of the budget before its implementation by administrators. The bill, entitled Approval of USGA Budget, would legally prevent future proposed budgets from being implemented without officially being voted through by the Senate.
The bill faced questions regarding its adherence to the USGA constitution. USGA President Kyle Adams, who co-authored the bill last school year but failed to get it signed into law, addressed the Senate with his opinion on the bill. “When [Senator Danny Truong] and I worked to pass this legislation last year, there were months of conversation that we had with finance, with judicial, about the constitutionality of it… the conversation regularly was the fact that there is very much the potential that the budget will stop if USGA chooses to not pass the budget through the Senate. So if we don’t achieve an approval of the budget from the Senate, then we can’t fund the RSOs that we fund, we can’t fund the operation of USGA, we can’t fund anything through the student government association,” Adams said. “So at the end of the day, if you all want to make sure that students are receiving funding, we have to ensure that process and structure are in place before we just go and pass a bill that says that that approval has to happen, because I can tell you that in my personal opinion if this bill was passed, I would be very firm on not using the budget until it was approved by the Senate.”
After a period of debate among senators and a close roll-call vote, the bill was tabled for further discussion at a later meeting.
Senators lastly addressed a bill requiring that the Senate approve all future positions created within the USGA. The bill came as a response to concerns that arose over the summer around the executive branch being unchecked in its ability to create new positions. Debate over whether to confirm positions created by President Adams in the spring stalled legislation over the summer and led to a very late start on work for the fall semester for the entire student government. “It seems like all of the new positions that were added were people who lost their elections,” said Senator Luke Statom. “I love all y’all, y’all do great work, I’m just saying I don’t want this to continue to happen, where every year when somebody loses an election, a new position is added so that they can participate.”
Cassidy Stoddart, who ran alongside Adams for Executive Vice President of USGA but lost to Ayona Roychowdhury, was among those appointed to these new positions by Adams. Danny Truong, another colleague of Adams’, lost an election in the spring and was appointed to a newly created position over the summer. After the meeting, Adams told Kaleidoscope, “I selected [those individuals] because I think they have a high level of knowledge and ultimately as we work with the Executive Council, as we work with people in USGA to decide who we want in these appointed positions, particularly senior office positions, we want to fill knowledge gaps.”
The bill, after failing a motion to table for further discussion at a later meeting, passed.
To watch the full recording of the meeting, visit the USGA Instagram. To view the meeting’s agenda, visit this link.
