At Monday's meeting of the Association of Amherst Students (AAS), the senate focused on funding for the popular "Take Your Professor Out" program. The senate calls the program TYPO when referring to first-year participants and calls it TYPO X for upperclassmen. Senate members on the Committee on Priorities and Resources (CPR) raised this issue because they wanted to present the Dean of Faculty's office with reasons why it should fund more of TYPO's expenses.

The senate previously asked senators on the CPR to present a proposal to the CPR in which the Dean of the Faculty would provide full funding for TYPO while the AAS would split the cost of TYPO X with the office of the Dean of Faculty. Under this plan, the AAS would fund $5,250 for TYPO X, while the Dean of Faculty would fund the other $5,250 for TYPO X in addition to $3,500 for TYPO.

Faculty representatives, however, were not amenable to this proposal, and counter-proposed a plan under which the Dean of Faculty and the senate split the costs of both TYPO programs. This proposal would only decrease the senate's most recent contribution to TYPO X by $1,400. Despite the unwillingness to fund a greater portion of TYPO X, the faculty was enthusiastic about funding TYPO for first-years.

Senator Anoop Menon '07 said that the program is beneficial for upperclassman and entails more than dinner, as students bolster personal and academic relationships with the professors.

Senator Jacob Thomas '07 disagreed. He said that students get a free dinner and that, although the faculty has a responsibility to pay for part of the bill, as many as eight students are eating for free and only one professor is dining, so it makes sense that the senate should pay for half of the bill.

Senator Rob Cobbs '06 presented a motion to create a temporary alternative to TYPO that would be in place until the AAS resolves the funding issues. The program, called "Make Your Professor a Meal," would involve allotting students no more than $9.00 to purchase groceries in order to cook a meal for one's professor in his or her home. "TYPO is a program students like, and it's academically useful, but we can't afford to pay for such a large program when it's really, at least partly, the Dean of Faculty's responsibility," he said. The motion was tabled.

The senate decided it to try to express to the CPR the value of TYPO through letters from various committees. At the meeting, senators elected during last week's election, Brain Lawrence '05, James Lake '05, Emily Silberstein '06, Matt Vanneman '06 and Jon Godsall '06 were sworn in.

The senate also allocated approximately $13,000 to the spring formal pending referendum. During last week's election, the student body passed an amendment requiring each senator to complete a project.