Student Association President Jon Barnhart introduced a bill at Monday night’s meeting that would allow SA to help fund more student services, such as bus trips to away basketball games or political rallies.

Under the proposal, SA would receive 2.5 percent of the total student activity fee at the beginning of the next fiscal year and keep that money in what is called the student advancement fund. SA would pay for certain events from this fund and get back however much it spent the previous year. The advancement fund would be independent of SA’s operating budget. 

‘It’s really for student services as they become needed,’ Barnhart said.

SA needs extra money ranging from $100 to $1,000 to start programs in many situations, such as when SA proposed a bus to transport students to Wegmans and Target from campus this year, Barnhart said.

‘If we had this fund, we’d be able to implement this right off the bat,’ Barnhart said. 

The advancement fund would probably be used for one-time things, he said. He gave the example of funding transportation to the October Washington, D.C., rally with Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.

‘It’s one of those things that’s only going to happen really, really rarely in our history,’ Barnhart said.

The advancement fund could help bring to campus a carpooling program called RideShark, which allows people to sign up for carpools by showing them who is driving where and when, he said. 

SA members will vote on the proposed bill at their next meeting. If the bill passes, it will go into effect for the next academic year. The student activity fee is $185 and it rises with inflation each year, Barnhart said. The advancement fund would never go above 2.5 percent of the student activity fee, he said. 

Barnhart also recapped voting numbers for last week’s SA elections, in which Neal Casey won the presidential position and Jeff Rickert won the comptroller position. Both were unopposed.

Freshmen had the highest number of votes out of any class this year, amounting to 418 votes. But the freshman turnout was still lower than that of 2009, when 505 voted. The voter turnout for this election was lower than the previous year’s, during which 2,587 students voted. This year, 1,397 students voted.

Rickert said the lower overall turnout was due to a lack of contention for both the comptroller and presidential positions.

‘I guess a lot of people just really didn’t see the incentive,’ he said.

He also tied the freshman turnout this year to having a lot of SA freshman members who spread the word in their residence halls to vote. Barnhart voiced similar reasons and said the candidates this year campaigned well in the dining halls.

He compared the most recent election to last year’s, when he faced presidential candidate Hari Iyer. The election got more attention because of the competition, Barnhart said.

‘In the end, when there’s nobody to fight against,’ he said, ‘then it’s hard to fight at all.’

mcboren@syr.edu

Published on November 15, 2010 at 12:00 pm