SGA Logo of the Student Senate
Photo Submitted by Austin Dixon
The FAMU Student Senate approved a number of funding requests totaling more than $61,000 during its Monday meeting.
The Student Senate started the school year with $233,000 in unallocated monies to help fund organizations and campus initiatives. During the past six weeks the monies have slowly but surely been doled out and there may be more organizations requesting funding than money to go around at this point.
Meanwhile, the School of Business and Industry was approved on Monday for $5,500 for the Chief Financer’s Organization (CFO) trip to New York. That bill had been introduced at last Wednesday’s meeting.
The amount of unallocated funds left to be distributed going into Monday’s meeting was about $101,000.
After Monday’s meeting, the Senate has considerably less money to work with — there is about $40,000 left in unallocated funds.
“Everyone is just focused on funding as many organizations as possible with this last under $40,000 that we have left,” Student Senate Organization and Finance Committee chair Taylar Hall said. “I think the Senate is in a very frugal state right now, but I think it’s for a good cause because we still want to make sure that we fund the most amount of organizations as possible that really need it.”
While the amount of unallocated funds is slowly reaching its end, Senate President Rochard Moricette belies the Student Senate was responsible in funding different entities at the meeting.
“I feel the Senate was responsible with the funds during the meeting and we continue to support campus organizations and departments that impact students, like the Office of New Student Orientation,” Moricette said. “Overall, I’m proud of this session and what we’ve been able to accomplish thus far.”
With roughly $40,000 remaining in unallocated funds, Moricette said he knows the remainder of the money must be spent responsibly. He said he will look for changes to make the processes more efficient and fair.
“The remaining monies have to be spent responsibly,” Moricette said. “When the funds run out we will review our processes and make the necessary changes to make it (funding) even more efficient and fair moving forward.”
Next week’s Senate meeting will take place on Feb. 18.