This edition of Council Clippings covers the UHR and GSS meetings from Jan. 19, 2010.
The Blueprint requested funding from SGA for the amount of $30,000 for FY2010. The organization came up with a new business plan in an effort to reduce its reliance on SGA for funding, following a total budget cut last year. While the bill does not stipulate that the organization will charge a fee for the book in the future, it is likely that the organization will begin to do so starting next year due to financial constraints.
The bill was first considered on Nov. 17, when UHR passed the bill 36-6-4. GSS amended the bill to $1 and failed it, forcing it to go to conference committee. The conference committee changed the requested amount to $20,000. GSS still failed the bill 6-16-1. However, UHR voted 36-6-4, meeting the enactment ratio to pass.
A bill was put forward by the Provost’s Task Force on Intellectual Community to fund a new speaker series for approximately $60,000. The goal of the committee was to bring a high-profile speaker at an estimated cost of $125,000 to campus. The Provost Office pledged $1 for every $2 raised by the task force. When the bill was first considered in November, GSS voted to fail the bill 10-14-0, but was overridden by UHR, which passed the bill 39-7-0. During the conference committee the amount requested was changed to $45,000. The bill again failed the GSS 6-18-2. UHR passed the bill 28-12-0, however the bill failed to meet the enactment ratio necessary to pass. An issue cited by opponents of the bill was the high cost and a lengthy discussion was held as to whether a distinguished speaker such as those on the preferred list would be effective at speaking to the Tech community.