The Student Government Association assembled Tuesday in the Forum of the D.P. Culp University Center primarily to discuss funding for student organizations.The meeting started with Treasurer Maggie Darden going through the roll call. Following this, Vice President Ashley Bowser made sure the minutes from the prior meeting were recorded correctly and that all the new senators had been sworn in.

The SGA spent most of the time debating the BUC Fund consent calendar.

Zack Walden and Vince Carroll went through a list of organizations asking for money and what amounts should be awarded. The amounts were determined according to prior votes.

Some organizations were given their requested funds, such as the Adult Commuter and Transfer Services, Feminiest Majority Leadership Alliance and the Gold Humanism Honors Society.

Then discussions began as to why certain funds were granted and others were not.

Walden, SGA President Chad Hall, and others talked about the reasons why organizations like the East Tennessee Dharma Community would not be receiving the funding for a Buddhist monk from Nepal to come to the university to give three public lectures, as well as speaking to various religious studies classes.

“Three public speeches for $2,000 just makes no sense,” Hall said.

Another organization that was not receiving as much funding as it had asked for was the ETSU Habitat for Humanity.

Habitat asked for $10,000 and was recommended to receive $3,500. This was met with mixed feelings from the members voting on this funding.

Some felt there was too much funding going towards Habitat for Humanity and that the university needed to begin “weaning” the organization away from this fund now and continue that process into the future.

While others, like Senator Dalton Collins, expressed concern that this could negatively impact the way the university is perceived by the public.

“This community sees us as a bunch of partiers and potheads that come here to learn,” Collins said. “This would be great publicity for us.”

Collins continued by saying that senators and SGA members were elected to represent students and campus organizations.

“We were elected by students at this university and we are here to support organizations at this university,” Collins said.

After the discussion, it was decided that Habitat would recieve $3,500.

Another discussion for the group centered around the Student Choice Awards.

These are awards that allow the students to vote for a faculty member that they think did the best job in their school.

The voting for these awards will be online and will take place from Sept. 20-24. The process for voting will be similar to the process used for Homecoming.

The final issues of business concerned the Tennessee Intercollegiate State Legislature that will take place from Nov. 18-21 in Nashville and information regarding the Green Campaign.

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