This semester’s first ASUW senate session was gaveled in at 7:02 p.m., on Jan. 23. Issues involving the RSO finance policy, a waste audit and a new degree program were discussed.
At the start of the meeting, two new senators were sworn in, Venkat Madhyanan, from the college of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Matthew Bartholomew, from the College of Arts and Sciences.
Director of RSO Relations, Elizabeth Hancey, was the special speaker for this ASUW senate session. She talked about the finance policy and an ongoing audit on RSO events to evaluate their adherence to the finance policy.
“I have been asked to complete a full audit of all of the RSO events that went through funding board last semester and we have run into a few different things,” Hancey said.
Senator Bridget Delaney, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, said that she had seen a couple RSO’s not put the ASUW logo on promotional material, which violates the finance policy and asked how they should proceed, as she did not want to see anyone’s funding pulled.
Hancey said that she had seen this happen a couple times over the past semester while conducting the audit and is discussing the issue with the RSO funding board.
“Usually in the process, they are supposed to meet with me and I run through those things as well and in the funding board when I give them the reward letter, I make it very clear that they need to read a box that contains all that information.” Hancey said
Discussion over the RSO finance policy continued as the RSO Jazz Advocates of Wyoming came in front of the senate to ask for $2,000 for their event featuring Joel Frahm, a renowned saxophonist.
“We did have kind of a dilemma.” Senator Alex Mulhall, of the College of Arts and Sciences and Chair of the RSO Funding Board, said. “As Director of RSO Relations Hancey was just discussing, she did do an audit and one of the groups that popped up having the logo issue was the Jazz Advocates.”
After a presentation by the Jazz Advocates President, Donicio Trujillo and a few comments from a couple senators, then Senator Joel Defebaugh, of the College of Law, moved that they continue into Executive Session, which succeeded.
An executive session ejects everyone who is not either a voting member of the senate or a member of the executive branch from the chambers and swears everyone remaining to secrecy. After nearly 30 minutes, the chambers were opened again and the funding request was tabled.
The first piece of old business was Senate Bill #2587 Revision to the RSO Funding Board Deadline Exception Clause, which would change the exception clause so that any RSO asking for over $3,500 would have to strictly abide by the five-week application deadline and any under would be the discretion of the funding board.
“My only concern with passing this legislation, and I would love a little debate if there is any, is that last therefore clause,” Defebaugh said. “I am just not sure that we want to be enacting finance policy changes that take effect immediately at this point in time. It kind of seems like we have a general overhaul coming.”
Mulhall said that the reason is that it would allow the RSO funding board to start enforcing the five-week deadline as they had observed that many RSOs did not respect the five-week deadline.
SB 2587 was passed 21 to 2.
The second piece of legislation discussed was SB #2588 ASUW Waste Audit Initiative, allocating for a $2,000 student lead initiative to audit the waste produced by the University of Wyoming and provide a pathway for institutional composting.
“This is another bill that I have been kind of sitting on for a while.” Senator Jordan Blazovich, College of Health Sciences, said. “Because I know ASUW’s past efforts with sustainability related efforts.”
Senator Japheth Frauendienst, Haub School, said, “Currently, President Nichols, is wanting to further UW’s involvement in sustainability, more towards the strategic plan of 2017 through 2022. So this is just initiative, for a small cost that will truly benefit the university.”
Frauendienst also said that this initiative would put us on equal footing with peer schools, like CSU, that already have an institutional composting system and would help to reduce UW’s carbon footprint.
SB 2588 was passed with 19 for and 4 against.
SB #2589 Establishment of the Senate Vacancy Committee as a Special Committee was tabled indefinitely, as a previous senate bill set up a special elections framework to fill senate vacancies and a senate vacancy committee was no longer needed.
The last piece of legislation was Senate Resolution #2590 ASUW Support of the Creation of the Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism Degree Program, signaling ASUW support for the creation of a new degree program focused on tourism.
“The number one industry in the state of Wyoming is oil and we have a top ten petroleum engineering program in the world,” Ben Wetzel, President of ASUW, said. “And our number two is tourism and we have nothing.”
SR 2590 was passed unanimously.
