The AS Student Senate during their meeting on Friday, Nov. 22. Joe Addison // AS Review
By Stella Harvey
AS Fiscal Year 2021 Budget
At their meeting on May 26, the Associated Students Student Senate passed the AS Fiscal Year 2021 Budget with a vote of 17 votes in favor and zero against or abstaining. Nate Jo, AS business director, said that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Western’s administration is expecting a 5-10% decrease in enrollment for fall 2020, and asked the Finance Council to plan for a comparable decrease in funding. If the AS’s funding were to decrease by 5-10%, the deficit could range from $41,376 to $339,787.
To plan ahead for these circumstances, the senate’s vote included recommending the reallocation of funds allocated to programs that may be canceled due to COVID-19. The board also recommended temporarily freezing the AS wage policy, and using a portion of the AS operating reserve only if all other measures are inadequate. These recommendations were ranked by priority.
Jo explained that Western is expecting to limit in-person events in the fall, so many of the budgeted AS events will be canceled. Rather than allowing offices to keep the funds so they could reschedule fall events, the senate recommended returning those funds to the AS general budget, where they can be put toward reducing the deficit.
The senate’s second suggestion involves temporarily freezing the AS Wage Policy, which determines each student employee’s raise, taking into consideration each job’s level of supervision and difficulty. The highest-paid AS employees would not receive a raise if the AS froze the policy, no wages would be cut, but raises would be limited.
The AS will not know how much enrollment and funding has changed until fall enrollment takes place in June.
Senate Election Code
Ina LaGrandeur, Representation and Engagement Programs elections coordinator, presented the revised AS Senate Election Code for the fall 2020 elections.
According to the revised code, this fall, students running for at-large student senator positions must be undeclared. Candidates will no longer need to collect 50 signatures in order to file for elections, LaGrandeur said this proposed change was made in an effort to make elections more accessible.
The updated code also proposes giving students two weeks to vote in the fall, rather than the usual one week. According to the updated code, there will be no spending cap for purchasing online ads on social media, but students will still have a set budget they can spend from. LaGrandeur said this change is made with the expectation that online campaigning will be the main way for candidates to communicate with students if the social distancing and self-isolation protocols continues. The code was also updated to include that any campaigning meetings or events must follow social-distancing guidelines.
According to another revision to the code, AS employees will not be able to wear or distribute any campaigning materials such as buttons or stickers while they are working in their official capacity as an AS employee. AS employees will be allowed to endorse candidates in their individual capacity, but not in their official capacity. Official capacity is defined as any time an employee is working hours that can and will be logged on a timesheet, according to the fall senate election code.
While the senate will not vote on the elections code per the current by-laws, the AS Executive Board will vote on the code at their last meeting of the year on June 3.
Student Senate Recommendation Regarding Fall 2020 Elections
At-Large Senator and recently elected 2020-2021 Senate Pro-Tempore Sargun Handa, proposed holding senate elections earlier in fall quarter, so newly elected senators are able to begin their work during fall quarter.
Nicole Ballard for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences said choosing the dates of the election is up to the Elections Coordinator and not the senate.
Handa said while they understand, they believe the senate could give their feedback so the Elections Coordinator has the opportunity to hear the senate’s feedback.
Handa said they will discuss the recommendation with more senators before the end of the year.
The senate voted to hold an emergency meeting on June 2, to vote on the newly elected AS Executive Board.