The Student Bar Association Senate voted to allocate more than $200,000 to the executive budget and law student organizations at a special meeting Tuesday, which senators held after the body failed to approve funding distributions at a meeting last week.
SBA senators approved the body’s Budget Allocation Act in a 9–2 vote, issuing $79,123.37 in funding for law student organizations, $12,205.29 to the SBA’s ad-hoc fund and $110,328.95 to the executive budget. Senators pulled close to $10,000 combined from the initial funding that the SBA proposed for their executive and ad-hoc budgets at last week’s meeting to distribute to student organizations who originally received either no funding or significantly less money compared to previous years.
Senators passed an amendment 6–5 to take $4,000 from the executive budget, using the funds to instead distribute $3,000 to the Black Law Students Organization and $1,000 to the Labor and Employment Law Society. The additional compensation brought the groups’ totals to $6,205.07 and $2,621.76, respectively.
SBA Sen. Quinn Biever, who proposed the amendment, said pulling from the executive budget to give student organizations more funding would help balance the “financial responsibility” that both groups hold.
After the SBA allocates annual funds, student organizations can utilize these funds in any way they see fit as long as they remain within their allotted budget, according to the SBA bylaws.
“We have an obligation to student organizations to show them that we’re going to hold ourselves accountable by working towards something closer to what they got last year, and cutting from exec more than we’re cutting from them,” Biever said.
Senators also passed an amendment in a 6–5 vote to allocate $6,000 from the executive budget to the Equal Justice Foundation, an organization that hosts campus law school events to raise money for public interest law student stipends. EJP initially received no funding in the budget proposed at last week’s meeting.
SBA Sen. Omer Turkomer, the chair of the SBA Finance Committee, presented a reworked budget from last week’s meeting, which he said prioritized preserving funding for cultural and identity based student organizations, like the South Asian Law Students Association. Turkomer said his revised budget cut funding for student organizations’ graduation chords and marketing expenses like advertisements and fliers to free up space in the budget for cultural organizations.
“I appreciate the initiative of trying to find other sources of money that we can work with, but I’m here to give you the financial reality that there isn’t,” Turkomer said. “There isn’t any more money, what we have is what we have, and every adjustment we make is going to come out of something.”
Senators participated in a “fishbowl discussion,” where they could suggest amendments to the proposed budget and draw money from the executive and ad-hoc funding pools. Senators passed an amendment 6–5 that transferred $500 in funding from the executive budget to the Law Association for Women. SBA Sen. Isabel Shemaria, who proposed the amendment, said she believes their budget should reflect the substantial membership size of the organization — as any students who identify as female are eligible to join — and match the amount the SBA allotted to the group last year.
“I would say LAW is the biggest organization on campus considering more than half of people at GW identify as female, their budget should reflect what they think that they need” Shemaria said.
