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Future funding on hold to avoid lawsuit
By Allison Bailey
abaile19@mscd.edu

Photo by David Yost • dyost2@mscd.edu On Feb. 14 the SGA froze excess student program money to avoid a possible lawsuit.

Metro’s Student Government Assembly is freezing tens of thousands of dollars allocated for this semester’s students and halting all funding for the semester in order to avoid a lawsuit.

“We explored a lot of options and decided that that was the best,” said Andrew Bateman, head of the student fee and finance committee for the SGA.

Courts have recently ruled that any organization that allocates money in a school cannot be in any way biased against religion, political views or race. Currently, the SGA has no official criteria for the approval or denial of funding requests, meaning it could be held legally liable if it does not grant all requests in full.

Based on advice from Metro attorney Lee Combs, the SGA decided to fund all pending requests and move the remaining money from general funds into the capital expenditures fund. This would earmark it for other uses, making it unavailable for student funding requests. The motion passed on Feb. 14.

The action prevents the SGA from having to either approve or deny any funding requests, because there is no money in the budget.

Some of the money transferred will be spent by the SGA to improve their office. Wylie said that since there isn’t a finalized budget yet, he couldn’t say how much of the students’ money the SGA planned to spend on these improvements or how much money had been moved to the capital expenditures fund. Two weeks ago, the SGA was facing a $74,000 budget for the semester, according to SGA administrative assistant Rachel Zamboras. Usually that number is closer to $30,000 to $40,000 at this point in the year.

Bateman said some of that money might be moved back to general funds if needed and the SGA is thinking up other ways to spend the money to benefit students without putting itself at risk legally. A few suggestions include paying for student textbooks or starting scholarship funds.

“We do want to make sure that as much of the money as possible gets back to the students, because that’s what it’s for,” he said.

The SGA plans to have criteria for funding in place as soon as possible, but according to school policy it can’t go into effect until the next fiscal period, which will be this summer, Bateman said.

This hasn’t been an issue in the past because the SGA usually doesn’t get requests for the full amount of money it has allotted for funding requests. This is the first year the requests for funding have exceeded the $5,000 allotment.

“We’ve never had this many students come to us before,” Bateman said. “This is the first year we’ve ever reached (the $5,000 allotment) and not only reached it but surpassed it by far.”

Funding requests made before this decision will be granted.

The nine pending requests before Student Travel remaining only amounted to $978, which was granted in full. The request was approved with no requirements that students also come before the SGA to request funding for trips.

“You’ll have nine very happy groups,” said Arliss Sunderwirth Webster, head of the Student Travel Program.

Several other requests for funding were approved, including $2,319 to hold the National Young Women’s Leadership Conference at Metro, a request by the Metro track team for $6,050 to fund the Go Metro State Downtown 5K run and $2,000 for the Feminist Alliance’s bridge speaker.