Syracuse University on-campus student organizations have requested more than $1 million for the spring 2017 semester from the Student Association Finance Board.

SA Comptroller Malik Evans said during the organization’s meeting Tuesday night that the finance board had to work to best allocate the funds to the organizations, since only $635,000 was available.

SA assembly members voted during the meeting to approve the budgets that had been planned by Evans and the SA Finance Board.

Just over 200 bills — composed of completed packages, rejected packages and partially funded packages — were presented for vote to the voting members.

Organizations whose budgets are rejected, including due to missing their budget meeting, have the ability to appeal to the finance board.

Following the approval of the budget, Jonathan Schmidt, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences who was appointed by then-SA President Aysha Seedat to be part of the Campus Climate Survey launched last year, gave a presentation on the survey.

There were 5,617 total students, faculty and staff that completed the survey from Feb. 9 to March 28, which was a 21.5 percent response rate. The members who implemented the survey still felt like the students were represented even though the response rate was not at the level they hoped, Schmidt said.

Of the 1,160 total respondents who said they felt personally humiliated within the past 12 months by someone, accounting for 20 percent of those who participated, Schmidt said.

Twelve percent of those surveyed had an unwanted sexual interaction and consent, which includes rape on campus. Of those, 91 percent did not report the unwanted sexual content, Schmidt said.

The complete statistics from the survey are available at survey.syr.edu and also can be viewed on MySlice, which includes the questions asked.

Co-Chairs of the Student Life committee Anjani Ladhar and Keelan Erhard spoke about the returning and new initiatives that they have been working on during this semester.

The duo spoke about the Chat and Dine initiative, encouraging people to get involved and saying the program is a good way to meet with professors. They also talked about the free buses available for students wanting to go to Target or Wegmans biweekly from 12-4 p.m., as well as roundtrip buses during Thanksgiving for students.

Free menstrual hygiene products will become available in five academic buildings, and students will be able to access a Link Hall desktop from their own personal computer using the software that are in the buildings starting Friday, Ladhar said.

SA President Eric Evangelista was the SA final member who spoke at the meeting, discussing some of the work that he has done on campus. He met with administrative officials this past week and also spoke with landlords and Department of Public Safety regarding the off-campus camera security initiative.

Evangelista also confirmed that there will be buses funded by SA to give students who registered to vote a chance to go to local polling locations. There will be buses from Goldstein Student Center to Drumlins Country Club and from Day, Flint, Sadler, Lawrinson and Brewster, Brockway, Boland halls to Toomey Abbott Towers.

Published on November 1, 2016 at 10:37 pm

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