A bill concerning annual funding from the Student Association for University Union was debated at a Student Organizational Council meeting Saturday and later voted down three to one at an SA Administrative Operations meeting Sunday.

UU has been working with SA to create a bill providing UU with annual funding rather than the once-a-semester funding the organization currently receives.

The bill contained a sunset clause to end annual funding after the 2005 to 2006 academic year, Jacobs said. The sunset clause was inserted into the bill because UU will seek a constitutional referendum for annual funding in November, when SA elections will take place.

‘I don’t think that you should vote on a candidate depending on this,’ Jacobs said. ‘I would hope that both candidates back it.’

The defeat of the bill in the ad-op committee ends any chance of UU receiving annual funding for the 2005-2006 academic year.

‘We’re upset. It’s obviously not the outcome we wanted at all,’ Jacobs said, adding that he had wanted the students of the assembly to be able to vote on the bill.

The ad-op committee argued that it was too late to try to change the funding process, Jacobs said.

‘Their arguments make sense … we complete understand their concerns,’ he said.

Defeating the bill was ‘foolish’ on SA’s part and a crime that four people would keep the bill from going before the students, said UU Concerts co-chair Adam Gorode.

‘I didn’t see any rationale in rejecting this bill,’ he said.

SA representatives could not be reached for comment.

UU sought annual funding to ease the process of booking concerts, Horton said.

‘When an artist is going to be touring the start out my mapping out where they’re going to go,’ Horton said. ‘They select venues that are in close proximity to each other and they keep the traveling between those days to a minimum.’

An artist touring from January to June will map their route sometime between July and December the previous year, Horton said.

‘By being on a semester-to-semester basis, we eliminate a lot of possibilities of participating in an artist’s route,’ Jacobs said. ‘If we want to go ahead and bring an artist that is really big and really hot for right now they’ve already figured out where they’re going to be from January to May. They already figured this out during our first semester.’

Since UU does not have annual funding, it is at a disadvantage competing with other schools, Jacobs said.

‘Because we do not have our money and time while other schools are out placing their bids, we do not know how much money we’re going to have for the time of the show and therefore we’re not able to actually place a bid or offer an artist money to come and perform,’ Jacobs said. ‘By booking acts in advance we become a part of the routing process and we’re able to actually bring the acts that students want to have here at Syracuse University.’

Jacobs said that there is ‘no guarantee’ when trying to book an act for the spring semester.

‘They’ve already gone ahead and figured out the tour the way they’re happy,’ Jacobs said. ‘Now it has to come down to them if they want to go ahead and squeeze in another date. And when squeezing in another date occurs, they will charge more money.’

By participating in the routing process through annual funding, UU would be more cost-effective, Jacobs said.

‘We could go ahead and put in the bid at the price they’re charging everybody else at … which in turns becomes a more effective use of the student activity fee,’ Jacobs said. ‘We are forced to pay higher costs for artists that we want to bring to this campus because of the fact that we have to wait until longer to do so.’

UU could also offer better quality acts with annual funding, Jacobs said.

‘We want to bring better and bigger acts to this campus,’ Jacobs said. ‘There are acts that are still larger that you know Green Day, Jon Stewart – these are shows that are not out of our price range if we were able to act upon them in a timely fashion that we need to be able to act upon.’

The issue of annual funding sparked a debate between UU representatives and representatives of other student groups at the SOC meeting.

College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Lindsay Pasarin argued against the bill because she thought that annual funding would unfairly exempt UU with regards to the budget process.

‘The exception should be made for everybody – everybody should be made to have yearly funding,’ Pasarin said.

UU co-chair Adam Gorode addressed Pasarin’s complaint.

‘The reality is we deal with bigger funding and we deal with more people,’ Gorode said.

Jacobs also addressed what distinguished UU from other student organizations during his speech prior to Pasarin’s complaint.

‘What makes UU different student organizations: UU’s specific purpose is to program,’ Jacobs said. ‘Other student organizations have more specific target audiences that program for those particular targets. … UU programs for the entire student body here at Syracuse University.’

If UU was funded annually there would not be less funding for other student organizations depending upon how much money SA allocated to UU, Horton said.

‘There’d still be the same amount of money in Finance Board,’ Horton said.

‘That will come down to the actions of the Finance Board,’ Jacobs added.

College of Arts and Sciences senior Jennifer Kested said she was in favor of annual funding during the council meeting.

‘It’s impossible to please everybody,’ Kested said. ‘We have to look at what’s good for the majority of the university and the majority of the student body.’

Sunday, UU went before the Finance Board in its first round of hearings, to request funding for the fall semester.

Finance Board was very upfront, saying every organization will have to be cut and suggesting that UU prioritize its acts, Jacobs said.

‘It was really good to see eager, intuitive, inquisitive Finance Board,’ Jacobs said.

‘We’d like to think we would but that’s never happened in our history that we get everything we want … hopefully we’ll be able to get funding for what we need,’ said Sherlen Archibald, co-chair of UU Concerts and member of Finance Board.

UU does not go into Finance Board thinking it will get everything it needs, because it understands that the board must fund all organizations, Jacobs said.

Since UU did not obtain annual funding, UU will continue to operate under the current semester-to-semester funding, Horton said.

 

Published on April 10, 2005 at 12:00 pm