Senate Update: Unpaid Bills and Hesitation
Business started as usual, with a brief overview of events on campus. Some of the events highlighted for next week were Designing your AUP narrative, Careerology 101, both new initiatives from the Career Office, and a screening of A Bright Summer's Day.
As budget requests began to circulate during the meeting, Senators eagerly passed them without much hesitance.
The first two proposed budgets were BV Syria’s semester budget of €370, and a reimbursement for The World in 2019 Gala at €901.09.
The real debate came into play when an amended budget request for a UN summit trip was proposed. The initial budget request was passed last week during Senate, with a proposed €1,116. Since then, one student has dropped out of the trip, causing an updated, reduced budget of €803.47 to be brought forth.
This time around, the request didn’t go through so easily. Senators extended the debate time to address this issue on several occasions, with most inquiries angled towards the secrecy and niche concept of the trip, since none of the Senators were aware this opportunity was available.
Many Senators felt that there should have been more advertising and transparency offered to all of the AUP student body, as well as the opportunity to sign up since the trip was exclusively offered to seniors in the ICP Major.
After much hesitance and debate, the amended budget was passed.
After the long debate, there were three more budget request. One for Wine society’s Whiskey tasting event at €135, and two lost, unpaid receipts from previous semesters' events.
"I wish I had more information, I passed them so I'm not that upset about it, but they were two years ago, why should we have to use our budget for it now?” voiced Senator Olivia Jenkins.
One request was from Fall 2017—an old bill from Nelly Julien Bakery for €196.64. The other was from spring 2018 and lastly, yet another unpaid bill from Nicolas for €181.
“There wasn't much detail, except for it was something Kevin had found. We just thought given that it wasn't a very large amount of money that we would just rather go ahead and pass them while making sure both establishments have a system in place for the future for whenever people do go there and buy things on the AUP account, that they do the proper documentation and paperwork,” remarked Senator Chris Turner.
With little question asked about these two budgets, all-in-all €2,487.20 was passed for allocation to the clubs and the UN trip.
To watch Senate meetings in person, come to C-104, Wednesdays from 12:10-130.
Tune in next Thursday for another Senate update!
