ASG discusses funding caps on money student organizations can request

Miami University Associated Student Government (ASG) spent their Tuesday evening meeting last week discussing a bill that would place a cap on student organization funding.

Madison Johns, Farmer School of Business academic senator and member of the Funding and Audit committee, brought the bill to the floor which, if passed, will put a cap on the amount of money student organizations can request from ASG.

Many of the concerns senators voiced about the bill could not be answered because Secretary of Finance Caroline Weimer, a primary of the bill, was not in attendance. As a result, ASG voted to wait until Tuesday, May 1 to make a decision regarding this bill.

If the bill passes, student organizations will be limited to requesting $9,000 for events, $6,000 for capital funding and $3,000 for administrative requests per year.

Along with numbers from past funding requests, the results of a survey sent out to 40 different student organizations helped to determine the new spending limits proposed in Tuesday's legislation.

The goal of this bill is to limit organizations from requesting more money than they need. In response to the recent cutback of 50 percent of funding, Johns said many groups have doubled the amount they requested, therefore receiving the same amount of funds as before the cutback.

It also seeks to make the allocation of money more fair by giving smaller organizations a better chance at receiving funding, as larger groups would be the main ones affected.

Johns hopes these limits will make it possible to avoid large funding cuts in the future.

Following the discussing of funding caps, ASG unanimously approved specific funding requests from student organizations such as the Cubing Association, a Rubik's Cube organization, and Stage Left.

They then discussed changes to the ASG bylaws including adding a clause that prohibits students who are not student senators from drafting bills and changing the special election process to have one per semester instead of whenever a spot opens up. They also added an anti-discrimination statement, which was not previously present in the bylaws. Problems arose regarding many of the changes, so decided to make adjustments and wait until next week to vote.

The last ASG meeting of the semester will take place Tuesday, May 1.

berryrd@miamioh.edu