Student Senate caps special allocations at $10K

 Student Senate before their weekly meeting.
Photo submitted by Austin Dixon

In Monday evening’s Student Senate meeting, the Chapter 700 revision bill for the 2019-20 academic school year was passed. It will be effective the first week of October, which coincidentally is Homecoming week.

The bill aims to serve as a more efficient process to make sure more entities around FAMU are funded within a timely manner. While the bill has been passed, there will be a $10,000 funding limit put into place for organizations looking for special allocations.

With the bill carrying over into the next Student Senate, current Judicial and Rules Committee chairman Xavier McClinton talked about the importance of this bill getting passed and the effects it will have on the student body moving forward.

“I think that we now have the opportunity to help more organizations and reach a wider group of students across the entire university,” McClinton said. “Our whole purpose when it comes to special allocation is to make sure we reach as many people as we possibly can and still be effective and I think the $10,000 cap kind of fits that perfect amount to where we can help organizations out, but reach others as well,” McClinton added.

While there will be a $10,000 funding limit in regard to the allocation process for organizations and different entities, the Student Senate has implemented options that will allow organizations to exceed the cap.  The first option is for any organization to receive a score of 80 percent or better on the allocation rubric, followed by a two-thirds rule, in which two-thirds of the senators vote for a specific organization to receive extra funding.

“We left an option within the bill where if any organization gets two-thirds of the vote from the Student Senate, they can go in and still get more than the $10,000 cap hold, so that way if there is a need and the Student Senate senses that need, the organization can exceed the original amount,” McClinton said.

“Also within the finance manual, there is a rubric in which every organization must go through and be graded during the special allocation period,” McClinton said. “If they score an 80 percent on that rubric, then that organization becomes eligible for extra funding.”

With the bill reaching its third and final reading, Senator Maurice Gilbert was able to expound on the tedious process to make sure the bill was organized properly.

“Traditionally most bills normally only go on for two readings, so we had an extra week to review it because we wanted to ensure that we were putting in place the best policies, so that when we go into the 49th Student Senate we won’t have that big of a process of correcting things or making sure we have the proper verbiage within the bill,” Gilbert said.