Student Senate approves next year's budget without opposition, co-sponsors EMA 'Dance till Dawn' event

03/05/09 - Last night, the 2009-2010 URI Student Senate budget passed with no opposition from any senators or club representatives.According to Chairman of the Finance Committee Allen Petit, it's been a few years since the budget has passed without debate.

Next year's budget will be capped at $821,119.50 and will be spread between 82 clubs and organizations. This budget is larger than that of previous years because of the increase in the number of senate-recognized clubs.

Roughly 13 more clubs have been added this year, according to Petit.

He attributed the success of passing this year's budget and keeping organizations satisfied with their share of funds to more efficient communication between organizations and the finance committee.

"We dealt with a lot more issues in committee," Petit said. "And were able to work things out with groups during meetings rather then having it come up on the floor."

When allocating money to organizations, the finance committee makes a conservative estimate of next semester's enrollment. Then the committee considers any rollover money from this year's budget. This gives the committee a rough estimate of how much money will be appropriated between the clubs.

Petit said the only issue the senate ran into this year was scheduling the meetings with the organizations.

The Student Senate also approved a co-sponsorship of $2,000 for the Electronic Music Club to hold its eighth annual "Dance Till Dawn" event on April 4.

From 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., roughly 40 disc jockeys will be playing in various areas of the Memorial Union throughout the night.

This year's theme is the Renaissance. Students may show up as their favorite personalities from the Renaissance era, including kings, queens, jesters, criminals stuck in the stocks and peasants.

The tickets will be $5 for students and $2 for the students who dress up in their favorite garb from the time period. The list of all the D.J.s is on rewraveorder.com.

The $2,000 co-sponsorship was granted on top of $2,000 the EMA had received Feb. 18. In the last bill, $1,000 came from the senate's programming contingency, and the remaining dollar amount came from the alcohol-free event contingency fund.

In other news:

Due to a discrepancy in voting methods, Student Senator Anthony Sinapi was re-voted to his position on the bylaws committee. Sinapi was originally elected two weeks ago through a vocal vote, but according to senate bylaws, he was supposed to be voted in through secret ballots.

The Zeta Beta Tau fraternity is hosting the Red Bull paper plane-flying contest in the Ram's Den Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. There will be free Red Bull at the event. Contestants will craft planes and the student who create the farthest-flying plane advances to nationals and could win a trip to Austria for the worldwide paper plane contest.

A brief debate broke out among the senators about the efforts of the University of Rhode Island Lands and Grounds Department in cleaning the snow and ice off of pathways after Monday's storm. Senate President Tom Ahrens and Chairman of Cultural Affairs Maxwell Adepoju were among the senators who supported the department's labors. Petit and Senator Angelyca Abbe were among the senators disappointed with the effort. "The university acts like it has never gotten snow before," Abbe said.