At its last meeting of the session, members of the Student Services Finance Committee reflected on student council’s decision to fund the Multicultural Student Coalition and criticized behavior at the council meetings that led to the ruling.
SSFC members said student council representatives acted inappropriately during the MCSC budget eligibility hearings earlier this week, alleging student council members were not paying attention to group members’ presentations and were browsing social media sites during the meeting.
ASM Chair Allie Gardner said she agreed student council members should not be on laptops during meetings.
“I think it’s really problematic when you have people who are supposed to be representing students in a room and they’re not even respecting each other,” Gardner said.
SSFC Rep. Justin Gerstner said the tense environment at the student council meetings when MCSC’s budget was under review depicted how difficult SSFC’s job is.
“Student council really dissolved during this entire process,” SSFC Rep. Justin Gerstner said. “The functionality, the way they treated each other, I think it holds us to a very high standard.”
Despite its decision to freeze the Multicultural Student Coalition’s funding following an intentional policy violation, SSFC unanimously decided Thursday to support a powwow funded by the group.
Contracts for performers scheduled to appear at the Wunk Sheek Powwow had already been signed prior to MCSC funds being frozen. SSFC delegated $6,400 toward 11 contracts totaling $9,000 in order for the event to take place.
The money will go toward anything in the budget designated for the coordination of the event, including hotel and food fare.
SSFC Representatives said cancelling the powwow could reflect poorly on UW-Madison and MCSC.
“These contracts were preprocessed when we wrote the money from SSFC and we have to honor each process because it is not fair to punish another group for what happened,” SSFC Chair Sarah Neibart said.
