THE UNIVERSITY'S DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2008
NEWS
3A
STUDENT SENATE
Funds for student groups depleting early this year
Senate has spent more than half of its school-year funds
BY HALEY JONES
hjones@kansan.com
year, that day has come much sooner.
Student Senate usually spends nearly all of its available funds by the end of the spring semester. This
Senate has about $36,237.48 left to spend on funding student groups and projects for the rest of the school year. Senate started the school year with a budget of $108,168
"I think the problem snowballed. It puts such a financial strain not just on Senate but on students."
and has spent almost $72,000 this semester alone.
Alex Porte, Great Falls, Va. senior and Student Senate treasurer, was disappointed to discover how quickly funds had dried up.
ALEX PORTE
Student Senate treasurer
"Usually we have this amount left this time in April, and it's not April." Porte said.
"I think the problem snowballed," he said. "It puts such a financial strain not just on Senate but on students."
Porte said Senate funds had never been this depleted by the end of the first semester. He said no single person could be pegged with making a wrong decision, but that Senate had come up short in the area of fiscal responsibility.
"It's a difficult situation to deal with when you have such a small plot of money," Porte said. "We have to remember there are a lot more student groups than just the ones on
Porte said that, by the end of the spring semester, he expected only half of all funding requests to be approved. He said that if Senate were to pass all funding requests next semester, Senate would be $4,000 in the hole.
through the end of the school year.
But going in debt is not an option. If Senate were to run out of funds before the end of next semester, there would be no more money to fund student groups or programs
our docket for our meeting."
funds so students would be able to plan events and projects and operate smoothly.
Brian Hardouin, Broomfield, Colo., law senator and member of the finance committee, said the finance committee was responsible for allocating
"Finance puts lots of consideration into its budgets to make sure students are adequately being provided for," he said.
One of the most controversial funding approvals this year was
tor jayhawk
Motorsports, a student group and recreational
racing club that builds racing
cars, because it received the biggest chunk of
Senate fund this year: $10,085.
J ay h aw k
Motorsports,
have been given to engineering groups. Porte said that since the beginning of the semester, Senate spent at least 25 percent of unallocated funds on engineering groups.
Haverkamp said the early depletion of funds was a result of student groups becoming more active, industrious and effective. He said student groups were attempting bigger projects and, therefore, Senate saw larger funding requests that it didn't have enough money to fund.
which receives Senate line item funding every year, missed the line item deadline this year. As a result, the group requested and received a much larger amount of funding than it normally would have, Porte said. He said the group should have received less funding.
After Jayhawk Motorsports, the next largest funding amount of $4,210 went to the Civil Engineering Society to build a steel bridge exhibit.
Another controversial issue in Senate is the amount of funds that
"Finance puts lots of consideration into its budgets to make sure students are adequately being provided for."
Andy Haverkamp, Hoyt sophomore and engineering senator, said that engineering projects were semester-long projects that any students could be involved in. He said student projects that spanned over two semesters were more beneficial than bringing speakers to campus for a couple days, which cost between $1,000 and $3,000.
"We shouldn't be playing God with groups," he said. "Without funding, they die. We shouldn't be allowed to kill groups because we didn't prepare for them."
BRIAN HARDOUIN Member of Finance Committee
of that is allocated to block funding and line funding and about $100,000 goes to the unallocated account. The unallocated account is the account that Senate uses to fund student group money requests throughout the school year.
Edited by Jennifer Torline
AFGHANISTAN
Bomb victims convince Karzai to change stance
BY DOUG MELLGREN ASSOCIATED BRESS
OSLO, Norway — An Afghan teenager who lost both legs in a cluster bomb explosion helped persuade his country to change its stance and join nearly 100 nations in signing a treaty Wednesday banning the disputed weapons.
Afghanistan was initially reluctant to join the pact — which the United States and Russia have refused to support — but agreed to after lobbying by victims maimed by cluster munitions, including 17-year-old Soraj Ghulan Habib. The teen, who uses a wheelchair, met with his country's ambassador to Norway, jawed Ludin, at a two-day signing conference in Oslo.
"I explained to the ambassador my situation, and that the people of Afghanistan wanted a ban," Habib, who said he was crippled by a cluster bomb seven years ago, told The Associated Press.
Speaking through an interpreter, Habib said the ambassador called Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who agreed to change his stance on the treaty.
"Today is a historic day." Habib declared.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Afghanistan's reversal even surprised the activists who are urging countries to join the pact against cluster munitions, which have been widely criticized for maiming and killing civilians.
"It is just so huge, to get this turnaround. Afghanistan was under a lot of pressure from the United States," said Thomas Nash, coordinator of The Cluster Bomb Coalition. "If Afghanistan can withstand the pressure, so can others."
Australian activist Daniel Barty said the Afghan ambassador appeared to start changing his mind after meeting Habib at a reception Tuesday.
The U.S., Russia and other countries refusing to sign the treaty say cluster bombs have legitimate military uses, such as repelling advancing troop columns.
Local experts of The Halo Trust de-mining charity in Georgia look for unexploded cluster bombs used in fighting in the conflict between Russia and Georgia in the Georgian village of Akhaldaba.
Cluster bomblets are packed by the hundreds into artillery shells, bombs or missiles, which scatter them over vast areas. The unexploded bomblets can lie dormant for years until they are disturbed, often by children attracted by their small size and bright colors.
Handicap International says 98 percent of cluster-bomb victims
2P00
are civilians, and 27 percent are children.
Organizers hoped that more than 100 of the 125 countries represented will have signed by the end of the conference on Thursday. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said 92 countries did so on Wednesday. The treaty must be ratified by 30 countries before it takes effect.