SGA legislates omnibus bill to allocate rollover funds

Quinn Casteel
Assistant Sports Editor

The SGA is in the final stages of preparing an omnibus bill that will outline plans for the $150,000 in rollover funds leftover from last year’s budget.

SGA will present the bill Nov. 7 at their weekly Monday meeting.

SGA President Asif Bhavnagri said although the exact figures are not yet official, a large portion of the money will go to student organizations who are in need of additional funds.

Bhavnagri plans to meet with Dr. Timothy Reed, director of the University Student Commons this week to discuss the specific numbers.

The portion of the money that does not go to student organizations will be put in an account designated for “special uses.”

According to Bhavnagri, “special uses” means something along the lines of sending students to the NCAA Tournament to support VCU’s basketball team, as they did last year. During the Final Four run last March, SGA held a raffle in which all students could enter, and 100 winners were given free tickets, transportation and lodging to go to San Antonio for the Sweet Sixteen.

However, should the Rams fail to make the NCAA Tournament this season, the use of the remaining funds would still be open for discussion.

That being the case, SGA officials do not want students to think they are sitting on money to keep it away from student organizations.

“We’re not here to launder any money or anything,” said Miracle Allums, chairwoman of the SGA senate. “Our purpose is to give back to the students.”

In the United States Congress, omnibus bills are common practice and are legislated when they need to package together several different financial decisions into one bill.

The SGA goes through the same process every year when they release their budget and distribute the funds to student organizations based on how much they request.

This bill is different than the annual budget planning because the rollover funds vary drastically from year to year. This years current $150,000 influx is more than a typical year.

Emily Howell, a VCU junior, said she wishes SGA had been more liberal in the way they disbursed the money.

“There are plenty of other things that money could go to,” she said. “Things that could actually benefit the university as a whole and not just one organization.”

Tina Irizarry, also a VCU junior said she would rather see the rollover funds go toward a few extra scholarships for the university to give out.

Rollover funds are not funds that SGA has denied student organizations; rather, it is the money that student organizations receive but don’t spend in a given school year.

The entirety of the SGA’s budget comes from the student activity fee, which every VCU student pays at the beginning of each fall semester.

This semester, the activity fee was $45 per student. Thirty-four percent of that money is split between the SGA, the Fraternity and Sorority Finance Committee, the Graduate and Student Association Funding Committee and the Sports Club.

If the rollover funds were to be used as refunds for students, it would come out to about $4 a person.

Although the students provide the funding through the mandatory student activity fee, vice-chair of the SGA legislative branch Jazmin Tanner said it would not be in the in the spirit of the fee to put the rollover funds toward extra scholarships or to give students a refund.

“The money cannot go back to students because the purpose of the student activity fee is to put together organizations where students can be involved or use it for something that all of the students can enjoy,” Tanner said.

“It’s not for scholarships … If you look under all of the things that are funded by student activity fees, it’s all things that benefit or potentially benefit the student body as a whole.”

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Additional reporting by Lisa Noe and Jessie Carroll

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