The Associated Student Body Student Senate has been debating funding for their End-of-the-Year banquet and funding for the College Republicans.
“If we don’t award ourselves in some way, no one else on campus is going to,” said President Kenneth Hinton during discussion about how much they would spend on awards.
Last year the Student Senate spent no more than $400 on awards. Some senators were concerned that this was too much money.
“I want a limit as to how much is spent on actual awards,” Clubs and Events Board President Jeremy Diefenbacher said.
He added that spending student money on awards for the senators was a self-gratifying activity.
A proposed bill to fund the banquet at a cost of $1,745.04 was tabled more information regarding the breakdown of the funds was presented to the board.
“It’s easy to be kept in the dark about things,” Lipuma said. “sometimes you ask the board to fund something and they don’t because they were allocating money towards the banquet.”
Senator Tim Lipuma and Jorge Riley, director of finance, wondered why CAEB decided not to have a joint banquet with the Student Senate.
In the midst of planning for the upcoming advocacy event, a new bill has introduced by Riley sparked debate among board members.
The bill requested $900 to send students from the ARC College Republicans club to the California Republican Party convention.
“Two members of the club are state delegates,” Riley said. “Nine or 10 students will be attending.”
Senators seemed concerned over whether the students would be representing the interests of American River College, or the interests of the Republican Party.
“Is it campus enrichment, or club enrichment?” asked LeslieAnn Dameron.
Diefenbacher said he wanted a total breakdown of the costs and the number of students attending.
Riley said that the Senate was overly harsh on his request because it was the College Republicans asking for money.
He pointed out that he had voted for students to attend the Reconstructing the Rainbow LGBTQIA Regional Conference in the name of equal access, in spite of the fact that they violate his personal beliefs.
Diefenbacher disagreed that the board was not treating him equally, saying that when other clubs like Umoja, another club on campus requested money, “they too were requested to report their experience to the board and when the we granted $2,000 to the Model United Nations, they presented a complete powerpoint presentation.”
Jorge Riley • Mar 12, 2014 at 1:52 pm
My bill was with a prepared breakdown of the costs and I did have a powerpoint presentation ready for the third reading but was shut down before I was able to make comments under the guise of all monies were already allocated to the end of the year banquet which is 2/9ths of the total student government budget.
While the Student Senate and CAEB claim they don’t want to spend the money on themselves CAEB has allocated 1/5th of their money for the annual budget to do the same thing leaving about $4000 spent on the two dinners. There is your student representation. When I was on student government we may have spent $400 all together on a pizza party because service was it’s own reward.
While I have no intention of dwelling on this website I want to assure everyone my statements about supporting the Reconstructing the Rainbow were as follows:
It is my intention to support whatever bills come forth in accordance with the bylaws because every group on campus should be entitled to request funds equally regardless of who is requesting.
I find that my presentation of this bill and its being said by Jeremy Diefenbacher “We should just vote on this and throw it off the table now” at it’s first reading again demonstrates my neutrality on the board and the bias held against me for being a diverse member on the board.
(Diversity: People of different views and origins coming together for the common good.)