The Student Assembly senate voted to allocate $7,034 for the purchase of 13 recycling containers to be placed around campus at the Tuesday night meeting. The purchase is the main aspect of the Outdoor Recycling Containers Act, jointly sponsored by Sens. Ben Brown ’11 and Brittany Fallon ’11.
The bill, which the sponsors have been working on “since summertime,” according to Fallon, comes after an eight-week trial period that demonstrated the need for the bins.
“[The pilot program] was so successful that we could not keep up with it,” Fallon said. “[The bins] were full every time.”
Several senators expressed concern over this particular use of SA funds, arguing that the College of William and Mary should provide the recycling bins.
Sen. Rachel Hutson M.B.A. ’09, from the Graduate Student Association, compared the current bill to the AED Act, passed earlier this term.
“Quite frankly, if it mattered to William and Mary — the College as a whole — they’d find $7,000 to do this,” she said. “This is setting a precedent that if the students want something that is really not an activity, they can just say ‘well if you want to do it, it’s coming out of your reserves and you pay for it.’”
Sen. Matt Pinsker ’09 agreed.
“If we do end up paying for this, it means that the sustainability committee is not doing their job,” he said, referring to the group charged with allocating the green fee.
Other senators were more supportive. Sen. Ryan Ruzic J.D. ’11, a representative from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, argued that the bill would be one of the SA’s more lasting achievements.
“I think that this is a really nice program. I think it’s nice that we can spend money on something that makes an actual improvement on campus,” Ruzic said. “One of the nice things about this is that it’s permanent, it’s going to help people.”
The bill passed 19-3-0.
The senate also voted on the Club Connection Act, sponsored by Sen. Sarah Rojas ’10 and Fallon. The bill aims to bridge the “disconnect” between students and the SA by charging the Senate Outreach Committee with maintaining contact with various student organizations.
Both sponsors cited occasions on which they were contacted by clubs asking for some form of assistance — a recurring issue that would be better dealt with “in an institutionalized way,” Fallon said.
The bill was approved by unanimous consent.
Several bills were presented for future consideration.
The Student-Police Tailgate Act, sponsored by Sen. Ross Gillingham ’10, aims to arrange a tailgate between the student body and campus police. A total of $400 would be allocated for the purchase of food for the occasion.
The Campus Kitchens Act, sponsored by Sen. Michael Douglass ’11, would allocate $1,545.64 to alleviate Campus Kitchens’s financial crisis.
The Honor Code Referendum Act, sponsored by Sen. Steven Nelson ’10, seeks to address the low student participation in last week’s Honor Code Referendum, which received only 501 votes. The bill strongly recommends that a new referendum election be held on the same day as the spring 2009 SA election.
The last bill introduced was the Helping Haul Hindi Here Act, sponsored by Fallon, which would allocate $500 from the SA’s off-campus account to supplement the funds already raised from other sources on campus to bring an introductory Hindi course to the College. Already, $4,250 has been raised for this purpose.
Sen. Walter McClean ’09 ended the meeting with a reminder to the senators to “please make clear that you are representing yourself and your own views” outside of SA.
