Student government representatives will vote on several major changes Monday, including an increase to the student activity fee and amendments to the Student Association constitution.
PROPOSED CHANGES TO ACTIVITY FEE
SA President Adam Amit and executive board members are looking to raise the current $86.50 activity fee, which is used to finance student group budgets, event programming and Off Campus College Transport, among other things.
The two resolutions presented to the Assembly Monday requested the fee to increase to either $92.50 or $95.
According to SA Vice President for Programming Aaron Cohn, $95 is the amount needed to support the budgets of OCCT, the SA Programming Board and student groups. The $92.50 is offered as a compromise for Assembly representatives who would like to see a smaller increase.
“If we want to put on elite programming,” Cohn said, “we need a combination of money from retained earnings as well as an increase of the student activity fee to keep up with increasing costs.”
Others, including Assembly representative Adam Shamah and Vice President for Academic Affairs Daniel Rabinowitz disagree. They argue that an increase in the fee would be imprudent, since the SA will have more than $250,000 in retained earnings, released to them for the 2010-11 school year.
Their resolution requests that the activity fee remain at $86.50, using the available money from retained earnings from this year, and potentially holding another vote to increase the fee based on need for the 2011-12 school year.
Rabinowitz believes that if students see an increase for the fee on their ballot, they will vote against it. If any proposal regarding the student activity fee is voted down by the student body, there will be no student activity fee the following year.
“It’s just not worth the risk,” Rabinowitz said.
The State University of New York board of trustees mandates that the student activity fee be put to a referendum every two years.
ALLOCATION OF ACTIVITY FEE
Amit hopes to specifically allocate parts of the funds from the activity fee to OCCT and SAPB, but any redistribution of funds requires a constitutional amendment.
The amendments are not directly related to the proposals for an activity fee increase.
In two proposals, Amit and co-authors call for OCCT to receive a direct fee of either $12 or $13.50 per student, and the SAPB to be allocated $11 or $12, respectively. The amendment would alter the current fee per undergraduate student for OCCT, which is $9.
“The only way to guarantee in our budget year after year that we can allocate a certain amount of money to OCCT and SAPB is to change the constitution,” Amit said.
If approved by the Assembly, this constitutional change would be put to a student body vote and needs a two-thirds approval.
CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW
The SA will also vote Monday on the wide-ranging reforms to the constitution proposed last week by the the Constitutional Review Committee.
On Monday, the committee presented its recommendations, which included creating two new committees, requiring a monthly written report of the SA’s expenditures and incomes, placing new limits on the power of the Judicial Board, requiring plain language summaries of all SA legislation and more clearly defining the role of the vice president for multicultural affairs.
Randal Meyer, the committee’s chair, said the changes constituted an effort to “democratize the SA [and] improve the services of the SA for students.”
Meyer said he expects the amendments to pass unanimously.
— Rob Bellon contributed to this report.