The Marquette Student Government passed an amendment to reform the student organization allocations process Thursday night in an effort to eliminate confusion surrounding the process, as well as encourage requests for on-campus events, according to the bill’s authors.
The bill changes the allocation title to the “Student Organization Funding Process.” It also will remove the limitation on the number of periods organizations can request and receive funds. Previously, organizations could only receive funds in three allocation periods.
Executive Vice President Joey Ciccone, a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences, and Financial Vice President John Dunlap, a junior in the College of Business Administration, authored and presented the reforms to the Senate.
Ciccone said the legislation will allow different organizations to collaborate on events, and should lead to larger programming. Organizations will not have to worry about wasting their requests in collaboration with other groups, he said.
The reforms also established a hard deadline on requests — late submissions to MUSG were considered previously — and reduced the number of non-club sports funding deadlines from three to two per semester. This entails funding for all student organizations that are not club sports.
The reforms also state MUSG will not fund non-club sports traveling expenses to conferences, though they will still fund registration fees. Ciccone said this will open up funds to be spent for on-campus events.
Ciccone said after the meeting that MUSG will still fund service trip travel expenses.
During the meeting, Meghan Ladwig, president and senior in the College of Arts & Sciences, announced MUSG had met with members of the library staff about looking into providing more group study space, specifically in Raynor Library. She said the original intent for the building was to be more group-oriented, whereas Memorial Library would be silent study space.
Also, applications to run for an MUSG position are available in the Alumni Memorial Union and are due this Thursday at 5 p.m. Primary elections will be held March 23.