Student Assembly

Dear President Skorton,

Thank you for the thoughtful response regarding Resolution 34. I have a number of points that I wanted to run by you after incorporating your feedback into the original proposal. I apologize in advance for the lengthy email, but I have tried to group these into brief sections for clearer organization.

Positioning of Amendment under Appendix A

The reason that the amendment was proposed as a change to Appendix A was because the changes are not relevant to individual organizations or requirements placed upon them. Rather, The amendment represented what the Student Assembly viewed as a necessary component to the actual byline funding process that determines an organization’s Student Activity Fee allocation. Appendix B is explicitly for “Guidelines for Funded Organizations”, but these changes are meant o reflect changes to the nature of the funding process as it pertains to the Student Assembly as much as for the organizations themselves.

In order to more clearly reflect how the non-funding year is meant to be a part of the two-year byline funding process, an amended version of the resolution re-names both Appendix A, Article IV, and the proposed Article V. If you believe the changes proposed in this amendment would better filed under Appendix B, we would be open to re-considering the positioning of the provisions proposed in the amendment. However, after an analysis of the charter I do strongly believe that these changes would be more appropriately placed under Appendix A.

Consistency of the Resolution with the current Charter and By-Laws

Appendix B, III. 7, currently requires a written report of funding and operations which should be summarized for the Student Assembly by the Vice President of Finance. This clearly will also be required under the proposed resolution, along with the additional requirements mentioned (ie. a required hearing with the entire Appropriations Committee, a tallied vote to accurately represent opposing views, logistics for followup with the groups, and an ability for groups to respond to the report).

Appendix B, III. 8, relates directly to new byline funded organizations and would require an additional mandatory meeting beyond what is required under Resolution 34. I believe the followup procedures and more comprehensive analysis under the proposed amendment would require this meeting only if deemed necessary (otherwise it can be done more informally, as was done this year with Slope Media).

Therefore, I completely agree with your observation that Appendix B, III.7 and III.8 would be redundant and thus I have incorporated the striking of these sections to the edited version of this resolution.

Rationale for expanding the role of the Appropriations Committee during Non-Funding years

While we recognize that existing criteria were in place to establish a relationship between the Student Assembly and byline funded organizations during non-funding years, we do believe that the additional changes in Resolution 34 go far beyond simple reporting requirements. They represent a cultural shift which encourages a dialogue between byline funded groups and the Student Assembly which does not currently exist. The views you have brought up were considered by the Student Assembly for an extended period of time (this resolution was debated at four consecutive meetings and went through an extensive series of edits that incorporated feedback from byline funded organizations, the Appropriations Committee, Student Assembly members, and even community members).

The very pressing concern of biasing future decisions that you highlighted was also raised by many representatives. However, I believe the final consensus was that this process does quite the opposite: it removes current bias in the system. As someone who has attended Appropriations Committee meetings for the past four years, I have seen how during funding years, committee members shared their very subjective recollections of how groups were evaluated in the previous year, which influenced the vote of new and younger members. Additionally, the current lack of voting on the committee’s opinion during non-funding years results in the reports released by the Vice President of Finance being unable to contain either differing opinions or tangible recommendations. By extension, this makes the reports very ineffective at communicating the committee’s opinions to either the groups themselves or the committee during the upcoming funding year. Additionally, the lack of a group’s ability to respond to the committee’s report made this opinion very one-sided, which was only compounded by the fact that members gave their personal opinions during funding years of not only what the previous committee thought but also how groups had responded to their feedback.

Above all else however, I believe this resolution passed the 2/3 voting threshold o the Student Assembly because of the support given by actual byline funded organizations. Over 15 organization presidents and treasurers submitted their support for this amendment and a number even attended the final meeting it was presented at to describe how this process has helped them this year. Whether it was new byline funded organizations (Slope Media), young and growing organizations (Big Red Bikes), long-standing institutional organizations (Cornell Cinema), or even groups that were recommended cuts by this year’s committee (Class Councils), we saw this resolution receive demand from an incredibly large range of the byline funded organizations. At the end of the day, this is why these changes were proposed: to ensure that the Appropriations Committee and byline funded organizations would be better able to come together to use the Student Activity Fee to benefit all students at Cornell to the greatest extent possible.

Amended Resolution

I have attached a copy of an updated version of the resolution that was placed at the end of the agenda at last week’s meeting (Thursday, 4/11/13) and will be discussed more comprehensively at this week’s meeting. It incorporates changes amending Appendix B and restating both the title of the newly proposed article to Appendix A and the title of the current section Appendix A, Article IV to clearly reflect that both funding and non-funding years are components of setting the Student Activity Fee through the byline funding process.

If you have feedback or recommendations on the amended resolution, please do not hesitate to share them. I would welcome the opportunity to incorporate any further thoughts you have before the Student Assembly revisits discussion on the resolution. I will also hopefully be sitting down with Ari Epstein in the Office of the Assemblies before Thursday’s meeting to get his insights as well. Many byline funded organizations have requested their reports from this year (including their vote totals), so please let me know if I can clarify any points or if there is anything I can do to help.

Thank you again for all of your help and we hope to hear back from you soon.

Best regards,
Roneal