A new committee has been formed to determine the amount of funding given to some of the university’s highest funded organizations.

At last week’s Government of the Student Body meeting, the senate passed a bill to create a committee that will give more power to the Graduate Student Senate to determine how much of its student fees are paid to the Student Legal Services, the Iowa State Daily and ASSET (Ames Social Service Evaluation Team). The new agreement will ensure that the three organizations are equally funded by undergraduate, graduate and veterinary medicine students.

Robert Livingston, graduate student senator and proposer of the bill, said it was his goal to provide more say for the graduate students.

“I fully endorse the bill. It will change the articles of cooperation, and it has helped to do what they were intended to do — provide a say for both GSB and GSS,” Livingston said.

Adam Obrecht, agriculture senator and one of the proposers of the bill, said he thinks the biggest benefit will be that GSB and GSS will work closer together.

“This will get GSB and GSS on a more common ground of talking about the funding procedure and will allow for more cooperation between the two organizations,” Obrecht said.

The bill will amend the articles of cooperation to create the Student Government Joint Allocations Committee, which will consist of the GSB finance director, the GSS treasurer, two GSB senators appointed by the GSB president with the approval of the Senate and one GSS representative appointed by the GSS president with the approval of the senate.

Steve Elliott, finance director, said the Daily, Student Legal Services and ASSET are groups that are considered above the “split.”

The split is determined to be the groups that are used by all students and are given funds by student fees before the money is allocated to the GSB and GSS to fund student groups.

All students pay fees to the university, Obrecht said. Of that, a designated amount goes to the student government. Before the money is divided between the GSB and the GSS, those three groups are funded. This ensures that all students pay an equal contribution to the groups. These groups were chosen because they are used by all students or are available to all students equally at the university.

The new “super” finance committee will look at the items that are funded above the split and decide which organizations should be classified as such, Obrecht said.

He said in the past, groups have gone through the GSB funding procedure and then had to be approved by the GSS. The new committee will hopefully make it easier for the groups to get funded, Obrecht said.

Last year the Daily was funded $89,000, ASSET was funded $151,000 and Student Legal Services was funded $141,000.

Elliott said the new committee will not drastically change the funding for the organizations.

In the past, he said, GSB has determined the amount of those budgets without any input from the graduate students. The new committee was formed so that both the GSS and GSB can review the three organizations’ budgets. He said the graduate students now can have a say in the budget by being represented on the committee to determine the allocations.