he Associated Students of the University of Arizona held its second meeting of the semester Wednesday evening, tying up a few loose budget ends, improving transparency and fomenting a new era of cooperation between the undergraduate student government and the Graduate and Professional Student Council.
Although the majority of ASUA’s budget was decided at last week’s meeting, the details of ASUA executives’ “”operations accounts”” were not resolved. The executives are the ASUA executive vice president, the administrative vice president and the student body president.
Last year, each executive received a $9,000 “”operations budget,”” which could be spent as the executive saw fit, after approval by the other executives and two other ASUA representatives.
This year, each executive’s budget has been cut to $7,000.
Another way ASUA is trying to cut spending and balance its $1.4 million budget is by requiring executives to present their proposals to the senate 24 hours before spending any money. If executives do not provide advance notice, they must notify the senate within the following 24 hours and explain why prior notice was not possible. While senate notification is required for these expenditures, senate approval is not.
The senate also approved an amendment to the budget stipulating that operations budgets be available online. Where and when the operations budgets would be posted was not specified.
ASUA members discussed reallocation of funds in an attempt to balance its budget. Some senators were in favor of reallocating funds, while others argued that taking away designated monies would cheat students.
Toward the beginning of the meeting, Lucy Blaney, a Spanish and Portuguese doctoral student and representative of GPSC who attended the meeting as a liason, said that she wanted ASUA and GPSC to work toward warmer relations, as they have chilled between the two groups in recent years.
Blaney acknowledged these tensions but said she wanted the groups to “”form a bond.””
ASUA members seemed caught off-guard but receptive to her request.
