GSB’s all-too-famous Regular Allocations meeting, which usually lasts well into the early hours of the morning, ended four hours early last night due to the efficient work of the senate members, even with the meeting beginning with a bit of confusion by senators on how the Regular Allocations process worked.

Eight groups’ budgets — Ethos Magazine, the Latino Heritage Month Committee, the Cyclone Disc Golf Club, the Chinese Student Association, the Society of Peace and Dialogue, Cuffs, MAYAS, and GSB — were pulled by senators on the request of the group members, with the groups looking to have their funding be reviewed again by the Finance Committee.

The groups’ budgets, once pulled, had to be reviewed by the senate and then voted on whether or not to pass the budget on to the Finance Committee for additional funding. All groups had their new budgets passed onto the Finance Committee.

Ethos Magazine was the first group reviewed by the senate which consisted of the group requesting more funds for extra expenditures that were not in the original budget submission. Bids for expenditures such as a conference the group will attend were not received in time for the Budget Balancing session.

Following Ethos, the Latino Heritage Month Committee presented to the senate looking for funding for the Latino Leadership Retreat and Latino Leaders in the Nations Conference. The Latino Leaders Conference had been cut from the group’s original budget the group presented.

“The reason the finance committee cut this was because the conference was more for personal growth and development,” said Finance Director Katherine Benton.

Many senators, though, put emphasis on the fact that the conference was just a leadership conference; not a post-educational or personal growth conference. Following the debate the budget was recommended to the Finance Committee.

Later on the Cyclone Disc Golf club had their bill reviewed by the senate. The club stated they did not receive half the funding for their 15 passenger van for a competition in South Carolina; all sports clubs affiliated with the Sports Council Committee are funded half their transportation costs by GSB. The club stated that they would like to be funded $810 dollars instead of the original amount of $347.

An Sports Club Council representative, who was not part of the disc golf club, spoke to the senate saying that funding the club would not look good with the consistency of their funding process. The council had already been allocated their funding for the fiscal year, and he stated it would be unfair to the other sports clubs if they did.

A couple of senators spoke about having the club come back in the fall and ask for transportation funding then but this idea was put to rest.

The Cyclone Disc Golf Club representative rebutted these statements by saying that if the club did not receive this funding change they would receive less funding next year than they had the past year. After a while of debating, the budget was pasted onto the finance committee.

The last budget to be reviewed of the night was GSB’s own budget. The review began with GSB President Dakota Hoben and Treasurer Arjay Vander talking about how they had shaved $2,500 from the budget they had last year.

The two also spoke about how they would have a change in their original budget because they had originally budgeted to have an out-of-state resident for a Vice President next year. The GSB president, vice president and finance director receive scholarships for their positions.

Speaker of the Senate Spencer Hughes stated after the presentation of the budget that they should remove funding for unnecessary items like the speaker of the senate’s parking pass or lessening the amount of phone lines in the GSB office. The speaker parking pass grew into the biggest argument for the budget.

“The speaker should not be compensated for working by receiving a parking pass while other leaders of groups who work harder than him are not compensated,” Hughes said.

Senator Austin Ballhagen added in that cutting the parking pass would send a message to the student body showing that the senate was trying to go green and that they were not paid for their work on senate. Following the discussion the budget was passed and recommended to the finance committee.