After nearly two hours of deliberation, the Student Association assembly voted to elect Duane Ford to fill the open student representative spot on the Board of Trustees.

Ford, a former SA vice president and SA presidential candidate, will join SA President Boris Gresely as the student representatives on the Board of Trustees.

“I think there’s a lot of issues that need to be addressed, and at some point they do go above the SA level,” Ford said. “(The Board of Trustees) is the highest board we have at this university, and it’s important that those issues are being brought to that level.”

The highly contested election saw five students submit petitions for the open seat. Besides Ford, former SA presidential candidate Ivan Rosales; Parliamentarian Stephen Thomas; College of Arts and Sciences Assembly Representative Eric Evangelista; and SU Ambulance President Matthew Feibert all ran for the position.

The assembly voted on the candidates in two stages. After an initial round of questioning, the assembly voted on whether each individual candidate was qualified for the position, without comparing the candidates to each other. Rosales, Evangelista and Thomas were ultimately voted as not qualified for the position.

Assembly members expressed concern that Thomas had turned in his letter of intent four days after the deadline, though Board of Elections and Membership Chair Adrianna Kam noted that there was some initial confusion as to the due date. In Evangelista’s case, assembly members were concerned that he was only a freshman and that some of his goals were unrealistic.

But it was Rosales’ candidacy that caused the most amount of debate among the assembly. Last year, Rosales sent an anonymous email to The Daily Orange and then-President Allie Curtis revealing that a SA cabinet member was no longer enrolled as a student, a violation of organization codes. This incident caused many assembly members to voice doubt as to whether Rosales could be trusted with the confidential information he would have as a member of the Board of Trustees.

After the first round of ballots, assembly member Dan Hernandez made a motion to reconsider Rosales’ candidacy. Hernandez said he thought all the candidates should have made it through the first round and that many assembly members voted based on their personal opinion of the candidates or weren’t thinking about the qualifications for the position.

While other assembly members agreed that Rosales’ past actions should not be held against him, Hernandez’s motion ultimately failed and the assembly proceeded to the second round of ballots, where representatives voted for either Ford or Feibert.

Budgets

In the first budget meeting of Gresely’s tenure, the assembly voted to fully-fund, partially-fund or deny funding for registered student organizations based on Finance Board recommendations.

Comptroller Patrick Douglas presented the funding bills to the assembly. The assembly cannot change the amount of funding an organization is granted but can vote to have the Finance Board re-evaluate funding decisions.

Organizations that were either partially funded or not funded can appeal the decision, but risk forfeiting any amount they were previously granted. The appeals process starts Tuesday and runs through Thursday.

The assembly voted to send two bills back to the board for further review. Speaker Ben Jones motioned to set aside the bill for SA’s operating budget in order to give assembly members more time to examine the budget.

The assembly also voted to review a bill regarding CitrusTV’s operating budget. CitrusTV requested $101, 251.28 and only received $54, 488.51. Kelvin Read, CitrusTV general manager and Daily Orange staff writer, spoke up at the meeting to explain why CitrusTV needs additional funding.

The majority of the funding that was denied — about $23,000 — was slated to fund a new set of lights for the studio, he said. The current lights are very old and last semester one burst into flames and started smoking, Read said. The new lights would not only be safer but would save energy because they are LED, he said.

Other business discussed:

• Jessica Brosofsky, a freshman Arts and Sciences representative, was elected to join the BEM.
• Amanda DeNardo, a junior Arts and Sciences representative, was elected to join the Judicial Review Board. In her new capacity, DeNardo will give up her vote in the assembly. Speaker Ben Jones was elected to fill her spot on the Board of Administrative Operations
• Charles Mastoloni, a freshman political science major and Daily Orange staff writer, was elected to join the assembly as an Arts and Sciences

Published on April 8, 2014 at 1:38 am

Contact Jessica: jliannet@syr.edu | @JessicaIannetta