SG passes organization funding appropriations in special assembly

Student Government held a special session Wednesday to approve organization funding for the fall semester. 

Appropriations were not voted on in a standard public assembly because they had not been finalized by this week’s planned meeting time. Appropriations were set to be voted on at Tuesday’s public assembly, but Charlie Weiner, SG speaker of the assembly, said they had not been finalized and decided to cancel the assembly.

“If we did not do this, it would be another week that all the organizations on campus who came to (SG) asking for funding … would have been delayed,” said SG President Kiera Dixon at the meeting.

Student organizations received approximately $25,000 of the $35,000 originally allocated in the SG budget passed on Sept. 1. The remaining funds will be reserved for spring appropriations.

The SG Financial Affairs Committee allocates funding on a points scale, evaluating organizations’ applications and deciding how much of the budget they can give based on the amount requested. All organizations that applied for funding, were listed on HornsLink, were in good standing and used the SG budget sheet, will receive appropriations, wrote Ainsley Stutes, University-wide representative and member of the Financial Affairs Committee, in an email.

“The scoring system scores the merits of applications based on impact to student body, track record, commitment, etc. and these are also used to decide funding in addition to the items the student orgs request on their budget sheet,” Stutes wrote.

Stutes said at the meeting that the Financial Affairs Committee started at around $300 for each organization, allocating more or less depending on the organization’s eligibility and request.

After these allocations, SG had about $600 leftover of the original budget and divided this money among the highest-scoring organizations, which were Texas Roundtable, TX Votes and Texas THON. Roundtable received $449.60 for an event called “Hex Rally,” TX Votes received $449.60 for their “Voterpalooza” and Texas THON received $389.60 for their “Pancake Night.”

Last spring, SG debated appropriating funding to UT’s chapter of Turning Point USA, a political organization aiming to “educate students about the importance of free market and other conservative values through well-planned, effective activism initiatives,” according to their website.

Some SG members opposed passing appropriations because the UT catalog prohibits University-sponsored organizations from engaging in political speech. Other members disagreed, arguing that the bill would only fund select TPUSA events, not the organization as a whole.

This fall, the proposed appropriation bill allocated $30 to TPUSA for a watch party for the mid-term elections. The bill passed unanimously.

According to text from the bill, SG members “discussed the organization’s watch-party programming and whether political content affected eligibility,” but “determined that registered organizations should be evaluated according to the merits and eligibility of the application.”

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