SGB discusses new bill, in-state tuition

Vice President of Initiative Katie Fitzpatrick encouraged students to reach out to their representatives about the state appropriations funding bill, which had its hearing on Nov. 13. 

“We’re continuing to write a statement about the state appropriations — that basically just means that we get a certain amount of funding from the state and reduce our tuition,” Fitzpatrick said. “This week, the Pennsylvania Senate is hearing that bill, so if you’d like to show your support for passing the state appropriation to reduce our tuition, you can go to with.pitt.edu and you can send a message to your representative.”

Student Government Board discussed an influx of allocation requests and also introduced a new election bill regarding campaign finances for the upcoming SGB elections during their Tuesday meeting. 

Vice President of Operations Sarah Siddiqui introduced the bill and said the bill will hope to further clarify what campaign managers for SGB can do, including what organizations they can take donations from. 

“The main thing that it does is ease campaign manager restrictions,” Siddiqui said. “It has some implications on who can be campaign staff, and it limits spending for affiliated organizations. The rationale behind this bill was to just clarify campaign restrictions and then also provide for some more flexibility.” 

SGB President Ryan Young also said the board has received more allocation requests than in previous years.

“I think it is a great thing that there are so many things happening on campus,” Young said. “Unfortunately, when you get twice as many requests week to week, you have to start making impossible decisions and implementing things like limiting request funding based on the number of affected students.”

Young said in light of the increased allocation requests, they are looking to potentially increase the student activities fee. 

“We’re looking right now into expanding our budget,” Young said. “There’s only a couple of ways we can do that — like a referendum to increase the student activities fee is possible, and if that were to happen, it would happen with the SGB election.”

However, Young said in the meantime the board will keep having to scrutinize each request.

“We just have to keep making these kinds of tough decisions to make sure that we stay on track to not overspend,” Young said. “We don’t want to get to the end of the year and then for a month and a half be like, sorry, we have nothing to get for anyone. Nobody wants to see that.” 

Allocations:

Catholic Newman requested $2,072 to attend a conference. The board denied this request in full. 

Pitt Ski and Snowboard requested their fall budget. The board amended this request to $30,000.

Panther Racing requested their fall budget. The board postponed the request.

Pittsburgh Electric Propulsion requested their fall budget. The board amended this request to a maximum of $30,000. 

Asian Student Alliance requested $15,733.93 for their fall budget. The board approved this request in full. 

Engineering Student Council requested funds for a competition. The board approved this request to the conference cap of $5,000. 

Black Action Society requested $1,208.69 for their fall budget. The board approved this request in full.