The SGA held one of its last meetings of the semester and decided on important end-of-semester business on April 17. There was a broad range of new business to attend to, but much of it consisted of charter approvals for new clubs, allocation of funds for upcoming events and nominating new senators to fill empty seats.
Most of the new business bills were approved or acclimated, except for one amendment, which Senator David Benjaih brought to the table, and it was heavily debated.
SGA’s last event of the semester will be a rape seminar on Tuesday, April 29. The rape seminar is being organized by the Student Welfare Committee and will take place during activity hour, between 1:40 and 3:00 p.m.
During the rape seminar, Northeastern’s Public Safety will teach self-defense techniques and answer questions. NEIU professor Dr. Shelley Bannister will speak regarding violence against women, and the Student Welfare Committee will also have a PowerPoint presentation and brochures to distribute.
As the SGA elections have recently come to an end, the SGA needed to fill more senator seats than were elected. Donna Gentry, Miguel Loeza, Luca Pop and Eunjoo Yoon-Meinhardt were nominated during the meeting to be future senators. There are still four seats left available for senator positions that need to be filled by the SGA’s next meeting.
Senator David Benjaih submitted an amendment titled “New Clubs Finance Guidelines Act.” This was Benjaih’s attempt to provide a ‘safety net’ for the Charter and Rules Committee and the Finance Committee, so that people aren’t simply doing what they want.
The amendment acknowledges that these committees, despite their good intentions, “may error in favor of permissiveness” when it comes to allocating funds to NEIU clubs. Therefore, any new or reactivated club will have a limited amount of funding they will be able to request during activation.
During the first semester that the club is chartered, they will only be able to request $500 maximum from the SGA. This amount will double each subsequent semester the club is active, until the fourth semester, when the limit will no longer be imposed.
Benjaih said this is important for the SGA because it is “valuable to have rigid guidelines.” Benjaih claims the SGA needs these kinds of set guidelines to make things easier on them. Senator Steven Jerome spoke and said that he doesn’t see the need for these kinds of set restrictions.
Senator Jason Garcia said the amendment was a good idea, but that it is not really feasible with consideration to how much work it would require of the senate.
Vice President Kim Murphy ended the debate because the senators were not abiding by parliamentary procedures. The debate will be revisited in the next SGA meeting.