The budgetary committee met Sunday to make its final recommendations; and the AAS, after extensive discussion, voted 18-0 with one abstention to pass the recommended appealed budgets Monday night at their meeting. However, results from these appeals were not available as of Tuesday evening.
Appeals were handled differently this year from in past years. "Unlike in years past, appeals took place over two days, six hours each day," said budgetary committee chair Livia Angiolillo '04. "In addition, the greater amount of time devoted to the clubs allowed each individual head, chair or president to express his or her concerns and needs necessary for a productive semester."
"For appeals, we had $28,782.60 available to allocate and we received requests for over $93,000. We went club-by-club; we did it successfully, we did it fairly and we did it uniformly. We had only $350.60 remaining after our recommendations," Angiolillo. "We spent 18 hours to work on the budgets this weekend; as a senate, you shouldn't just rubber stamp it. It would be a disservice to the student body."
While most of the discussion focused briefly on specific line items, the allocation of $600 to the Amherst College Republicans for "firearms awareness" drew extended debate. (For more information on the AAS discussion on budgets, see "AAS considers free Times delivery," page 4.)
AAS members debated on whether or not range training, which was to be paid for by the money allocated for firearms awareness, was a necessary expenditure by the club, or even whether it is the responsibility of AAS to determine what is necessary or not for a club. Despite lingering concerns over firearm training for the club, the AAS approved the appeal allocations as recommended by the budgetary committee. According to Angiolillo, 44 clubs filed appeals.
Angiolillo felt that the process was a success. "Appeals ran very smoothly," she said. "Unlike appeals in the past, the entire process took place weeks earlier and with much greater efficiency. We kept on schedule and did not run into any form of confusion. In addition, club leaders were helpful and patient when answering all of our questions and were very willing to walk us step-by-step through their budgets."
Money left over in the appeals budget will be divided between discretionary funding and programming funding, according to Angiolillo.
Graham Dumas '04, president of the sailing team, agreed that the process was handled smoothly. "Basically, it seemed like the AAS was very understanding about our specific appeals," he said. "It seemed like they were under a lot of pressure from the student body to handle this well, after having cut club budgets by so much, and they seemed to want to make up for it in appeals by making the process as easy and painless as possible. We didn't go in fighting, and we didn't feel like we had to claw for money either. The whole thing seemed to go in a fairly smooth fashion."