The Pitzer College Student Senate tackled the issue of Grove House funding during its Oct. 6 meeting, sparking an in-depth budget discussion. The Budgetary Committee wished to dip into reserve funds to allocate $5,000 to the Grove House for Wi-Fi. Since the Senate had discussed the allocation for several weeks, senators voted to suspend the portion of their bylaws requiring them wait a week to vote on the matter, enabling the group to vote on the funding that very night lest the project go up in smoke. This met with the protests of several senators, who claimed that the Senate had just suspended the entire constitution. Others asserted that the Senate had done no such thing. In the end, Senate Chair Nicolás Romo PZ ’14 clarified the language, and the senators voted affirmatively for both the temporary bylaw clause suspension and the $5,000 Grove House funding, thus settling the fiery issue for good.
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The fiscal debate continued when the Budgetary Committee requested a $10,000 allocation from the reserve fund, which would go toward this semester’s operating budget. Some senators were concerned that the Budgetary Committee was broke after only a month. Treasurer Bailey Masullo PZ ’15 pointed out that the Senate entered the fall semester with a meager $4,300, as opposed to the $23,000 it had on hand during the spring 2013 term. One senator sourly compared the Budgetary Committee’s covert spending decisions to those of the Republican Party. Thankfully, unlike the U.S. Congress, the Pitzer Student Senate is a functioning governing body and the Budgetary Committee allocation will be voted on next week as scheduled.