With the end of the fall semester drawing near, the Student Senate proposed a bill at the Finance Committee that seeks to improve the current appropriations process meeting Sunday.

Presently, the Student Senate appropriates funds to student organizations each semester.

The bill, in particular, is trying to make improvements in how the appropriations are handled procedure-wise.

Emerson Barker, senate member and press secretary, gave insight on the amount appropriations actually deal with.

“The way appropriations works is that we have about $140,000, more or less, that Student Government gives out every year to student organizations, that they can apply for to get it,” Barker said. “We had about $70,000 to give out in this appropriations round for fall.”

Student groups can apply online, where they fill out all the necessary information, and once interviewed, the amount appropriated to them will be determined.

“The appropriations committee meet for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and they meet for about four hours. They have to go through 140 to 160 requests from different groups and they have to individually go through each one; how much money people get and also what [it specifically has to go to],” Barker said.

“There have been several different meetings going on. We’ve had different people through the appropriations process come and talk to the Committee so they could give their side on what they think the appropriations committee looks like or what should the different procedures be,” Brian Krystek, senator in the Committee of Appropriations, said.

Last year, the Student Senate sent out a survey to collect feedback from the student body.

According to Krystek, “…a lot of students last semester filed complaints or disagreed with how appropriations were marketed or even with not being returned. There will be a communications manager [amendment]; basically it’s going to be one person in charge of delegating and being in charge of making sure students are aware about the appropriations process.”

Bradley Selzer, chair of the Government Operations Committee, affirmed that the existing procedure is not the easiest one for students to complete.

The fact that such important changes are being instigated so late in the year is actually normal.

“There are always a handful of Senators who have never been through the process and wouldn’t know how to make educated changes to the process without seeing it first. That is why it is common for the first bills on appropriations reform to be seen in December and early January,” Selzer said.

Once the Government Operations Committee signs off that the bill is constitutional, it has to go through a meticulous vote.

“The bill must pass a majority vote of our committee and a two-thirds vote of the present and voting senate body. Unfortunately, that is not the end. The Student Body President must also sign off on the bill before it goes into effect,” Selzer said.

Still, if it comes down to such, with a three-fourths vote, the Senate can overrule the president.

Selzer said, this will be the first appropriation bill for this session, which started at the end of the last spring semester.

“I don’t think a bill has come before the Senate about appropriations reform for this session…This is because most of the time the session wants to see how the process goes before they try to make changes,” Selzer said.

The current appropriations process includes a set of rules found in Statutes and another set in the Appropriations Packet sent out every year.

“It can take awhile for even minor changes to take effect. With a process like appropriations, this is not ideal. The solution is to split up the rules,” Selzer said. “The first half we put in Statutes; these are the rules that we don’t want to change very easily.”

Funds’ not going to the purchase of alcohol is one example of these rules.

“The second half we left to the Appropriations Committee to decide each year. These are rules pertaining to timeline, the interviews, and how the whole process was going to feel to the students,” Selzer said.

The bill will be presented to the Government Operations Committee this Wednesday.

“These were our views on what we think should be changed within appropriations. Many of the committee members will be attending the meeting on Tuesday night to jointly work on this bill together [with the Government Operations Committee], to talk more about what are some of the processes in appropriations that need amendments, what’s not working and what’s working best,” Krystek said.