Senate Beat: Oct 5, 2020
Continued Funding Discussions
At this week’s public Student Body Senate meeting, Senate approved line item funding for KRRC’s website costs and voted on funding allocation for Top 40 recipients.
In response to Senate’s recent decision to provide website funding for all student publications as a line item, Senate received a request from KRRC station manager August Singer to give KRRC’s website funding the same status. Due to staff turnover and the timing of Funding Circus, KRRC’s website costs sometimes take weeks to get approved, causing unnecessary downtime for the radio station. By making KRRC’s website costs a line item, KRRC would immediately receive funding at the start of the school year, giving them a potentially longer season during which they can operate. The vote to move KRRC website funding to line item was held during the public meeting and passed unanimously.
When asked, Student Body President Al Chen said that the web funding will potentially be available to other student-run, web-based media in the future. While originally intended solely for student publications like news outlets and literary magazines, Senate is viewing line item funding for web-based media as a way to make student-run media more accessible and equitable.
Senior Aislin Lighter Steill asked if the changes to student publication funding will result in a different system, or if student publications will still be in Top 40 like other club funding.
Student Body Vice President Apoorva Mangipudi clarified that the website presence of all student publications will be moved to a line item, but all other costs — printing, meeting snacks, etc. — will remain part of Top 40. Chen added that these changes are all still to be settled on.
Chen announced that there will be more conversations regarding Senate transparency in general, as well as more meetings concerning student publication support and funding. Senate will hold an airing of grievances event on Wednesday, Oct. 14 from 8-9:30 p.m. PDT. Updates on these meetings will be disseminated through SB Info.
Committee reports were handled quickly. Vice Treasurer Ena Hashimoto started votes on Funding Poll allocations, beginning with individual votes for each club. After the first two clubs, however, Senate voted on all Funding Poll allocations as a single item, greatly expediting a process no one wanted to sit through. All Funding Poll allocations passed unanimously. Mangipudi shared that the Student Committee on Diversity (SCOD) has decided not to move forward with its prior public event plans, both out of COVID-19 concerns and in hopes of finding a more meaningful approach towards representing themselves as on campus resources. Assistant Treasurer Kodinna Anachebe announced that they have been processing disbursements and training with the Business Office. Senator Vivien Zhang announced that they reached out to Reed’s Restorative Justice Coalition to make sure that they had received their training — they had — and the Restorative Justice Coalition asked to be added to the top of SB Info, alongside J-Board and Honor Council.