The University of Dayton Student Government Association unanimously passed senate bill 12-13-24, giving the UD men’s rowing team $5,000 on Sunday, March 10.
The team asked for $5,000 to help offset the cost of a new boat and the crew team got what it wanted in a 25-0 vote.
The team said it found a boat for $6,000 – a deal it couldn’t refuse, members said, as most new boats cost upward of $30,000 – but couldn’t afford through the group’s own finances. Luckily for these rowers, their coach paid for the boat out of his own pocket.
The bill was sponsored by Ghetto residential senator Connor Reilly. Reilly is a senior history and political science double major and also a member of the team.
The bill will allow the team to pay back its coach, and the 20 members on the team will split the $1,000 left on the team’s balance to its coach.
President Emily Kaylor said there were a number of circumstances that were in the rowing team’s favor.
“I think what helped them and what helped SGA make the decision was they were there to answer questions and that always helps,” Kaylor said. “No. 2, they explained why they didn’t go through budget week. They didn’t go through budget week because this isn’t an event. This is a boat that is uber expensive and their coach paid for it just so they could get the deal. So I think all the stars had kind of aligned for them.”
According to Kaylor, this is the 16th SGA resolution to pass unanimously this year.
Rumor mill
I wasn’t sure where this came from, but several senators told me they weren’t surprised Kaylor vetoed the College Republicans’ bill Flyer News reported on last issue on Tuesday, March 12.
They said the reason she vetoed the bill was because of some sort of informal precedence established by presidents before her, stating that the president must veto any bill regarding student organization funding.
If that’s the case, then the SGA should just amend its by-laws to have any bill about student org funding require a 2/3 majority vote in the senate and save everyone some time. Not to mention the trees.
But Kaylor said there is no such precedence, and wanted to clear up any confusion on the matter.
“The precedence I set was to veto any bill that came before budget week,” she said. “That’s because we don’t want them [student organizations] circumventing the system. I did set a precedence to veto any bill that comes to me before budget week that’s from a student org which could go through budget week. Big difference there.”
Makes perfect sense to me.
Budget week
Flyer News is still waiting to hear from SGA about the specific amounts of SGA funding going to specific student organizations for budget week during fall semester. It’s been 30 days since the initial request for information from Flyer News. Happy one-month anniversary, SGA.
To reiterate, there is no legal precedence or anything in the SGA constitution or by-laws that prohibits the release of specific information regarding budget week funding for specific organizations.
“Yeah, so, decision hasn’t changed,” Kaylor said. “I’ve actually had some student org presidents tell me they’re happy I didn’t release their line item, which reassures me we are doing the right thing. Again, if you or student orgs, all 53 of them that were in the fall and 43 in the spring, if they all say, ‘You can release our numbers,’ I’m happy to release them. But until the individual president tells me to release the line item, I’m not going to release them. … We really want to encourage student orgs to go through budget week and not discourage them because they’re worried about seeing their name printed next to a number they don’t want to see in the paper.”
Also on the topic of budget week, SGA has released that for the most recent budget week, it gave out $27, 792 to 43 student organizations.
Kaylor, a senior political science major, said budget week was down slightly from the $47,707 given out to 53 student organizations last semester.
“A slight decrease in applications this semester compared to last semester,” she said. “So that was disappointing, but still we totaled over $70,000 for the year to student orgs.”
