After nearly an hour of discussion, the Student Association assembly voted to adopt 34 pages of bylaws during its Monday night meeting.

The new bylaws, which were first presented at last week’s meeting, bring SA codes in line with changes made to the constitution last fall.

“Ladies and gentlemen, give yourselves a pat on the back because you just survived this,” said Speaker Ben Jones following the passage of the bylaws, to cheers from the assembly.

The two sections of the bylaws that produced the most debate during the meeting were the ability of the Judicial Review Board to deny a student organization funding and stipends for the vice president.

In presenting the bylaws, parliamentarian Stephen Thomas noted that in the judicial codes there was originally a “doomsday clause” that allowed the JRB to deny a student organization funding indefinitely if an organization commits financial fraud. The Administrative Operations committee proposed changing the bylaws to cap the number of semesters a student organization could be denied funding at a maximum of eight semesters.

In addition, Dan Hernandez, chair of the Board of Elections and Membership, proposed an amendment that would require the Finance Board to review the tier placement of any organization that was denied funding for eight semesters. Both the eight-semester cap and the tier review amendment were passed after some debate.

The assembly also voted to amend the bylaws so that the vice president would now hold office hours for 15 hours instead of 10 hours each week. In addition, the assembly decided to add a provision in the bylaws that would award the vice president a $750 merit-based stipend for good work each semester and a $1,500 stipend for summer travel.

The assembly also discussed adding campaign finance provisions to the bylaws. These provisions were originally proposed to the assembly two weeks ago as part of former SA vice president Duane Ford’s campaign reform bills.

At Monday’s meeting, the assembly first debated how much money should be given to each campaign. Thomas motioned to change the original $1,000 amount to $350. Recorder Malik Evans then motioned to amend the $350 motion to $250. After a short discussion, Evans then further motioned to indefinitely table the motion to change the amount and the motion passed.

The assembly then returned to the original question of whether SA should be giving candidates funding at all. Several assembly members strongly objected to giving out any money, including Thomas.

“How can we morally think that this is OK when we tell other student organizations, who do more for campus than just running a campaign, that they can’t run their program?” Thomas asked the assembly.

Hernandez then asked to address the assembly on the changes AdOp had made to the bill. Hernandez said AdOp proposed that $3,500 be set aside to be used for campaigns. Each campaign team would receive $500 in funding from SA and have the option to supplement the $500 with outside funds as long as they did not exceed $1,000 in total. Any funds out of the $3,500 not used by the campaigns would go back to SA. If more than seven campaign teams participated in an election, the $3,500 would be split evenly among the campaigns.

Following another round of debate, the assembly then voted to table the campaign finance provisions indefinitely.

President Boris Gresely also gave a report during the meeting in which he detailed what he discussed with Chancellor Kent Syverud during their meeting last Wednesday. The two talked about the ongoing College of Arts and Sciences dean search, the newspaper readership program, renovations to the Schine Student Center and improvements to the library, Gresely said.

Finally, Gresely said that he and the chancellor discussed that the Oct. 3 home football game vs. Louisville is currently scheduled to take place on Yom Kippur. Hillel is very concerned that holding the game on this day could be disrupting to students observing Yom Kippur, Gresely said. He has met with Hillel Director Brian Small and Interim Dean of Student Affairs Rebecca Kantrowitz about this issue. Gresely noted that these discussions are ongoing. However, Gresely added that this is more of an ESPN and ACC issue than a university issue.

Published on February 11, 2014 at 2:22 am

Contact Jessica: jliannet@syr.edu | @JessicaIannetta