Safety week might have difficulty passing senate
The $900 bill for Campus Safety Week might have some difficulty passing at 7 p.m. tonight during the Student Senate meeting.
Student Senate member Brad Saribekian said some members might prolong discussion or even vote against the proposal. This is because they dislike Student Body President Levi Bulgar, he said.
Saribekian disagrees with the possible move for holding it up for personal reasons. He said Campus Safety Week, which will be held April 6 to 10, is a popular event.
Bulgar has been working on passing Campus Safety Week the last three weeks. He told the Apportionment Board at the Feb. 19 meeting that his goal is to get the weeklong event funded totally outside Student Government.
Another item on the agenda is the appointment of three Student Senate members to the Student Publication Board.
Student Senate member Chris Krompardt said senate members Tyson Holder, Jose Alarcon and Brad Saribekian will be appointed by Tiffany Turner, student vice president for business affairs.
Kromphardt said this appointment would have been done at the beginning of the year but it was not put in the consent agenda until now.
He said the three members might question if Student Publications has budgetary problems. He pointed to The Daily Eastern News cutting its pages down as a possible economic concern.
“We want to see if money is an issue and if the paper should be every day,” Kromphardt said.
John Ryan, director of Student Publications, said the $4.25 student fee accounts for $80,000 for the student publication budget.
About $220,000 of advertising revenue comprises the majority of the remainder of the budget.
Ryan said all college dailies in the state are down 18 to 25 percent in revenue. However, ads continue to remain a steady income for daily publications.
“If we cut a day of publication, we would be cutting revenue and hurting ourselves,” Ryan said.
In other business, the Elections Commission has received corrections to election guidelines.
The most significant is excluding executives of the Residence Hall Association and the Black Student Union from being a member of the Elections Commission.
Members of either the Interfraternity Council or Panhellenic Council would also be excluded.
“I’m wondering why these specific groups were chosen,” Kromphardt said. “I’m going to ask the authors at the meeting for their rationale in choosing these groups.”
Saribekian said the three groups chosen were to prevent large, organizational influence to exploit elections.
Kromphardt said Alarcon wrote a senate resolution about sending out a disability survey in order to better represent this segment of the student body.
Bob Bajek can be reached at 581-7942 or at rtbajek@eiu.edu.
Safety week might have difficulty passing senate
On Sept. 27, 2006, then freshman chemistry major Leslie Godwin, of Lawson Hall, uses her cell phone to light the base of a burned out lamppost near the Biological Sciences building while on the Safety Week walk. (File photo / The Daily Eastern News)
