The Undergraduate Student Government Senate voted last night to transfer $1,000 from its unrestricted account to cover USG’s office supplies account debt.
USG spent $400 more than what it was allocated for office supplies this year, primarily on copies and faxes in the HUB Copy Center, USG Town Senator Adam Bender said.
Three pieces of emergency legislation were passed to keep USG operating for the rest of the semester and offset the debt it has already run up.
“I can’t ever imagine being in a debt situation,” said USG Senate President Mike Gillespie, saying the problem illustrates “classic mismanagement.”
At the beginning of the year, the office supplies account was allocated $1,300 for various expenses. By the beginning of 1993, the account had dwindled to a mere $300.
Since then, the account has dropped even more — on one day alone, $198 was spent on faxes in the copy center, Bender said.
“That’s 14 percent of our office budget in one day,” he said.
The problem has become so bad that basic day-to-day functions have been suspended.
“We can’t send mail right now,” Gillespie said, lamenting that he is unable to send mailings to State College Borough Council members advocating the passage of the proposed fair housing ordinance.
No one was blamed for the problems at the meeting, but several senators implied that many of the charges came from the executive branch.
The legislation placed set caps on the number of copies USG members can make and required that copy codes be assigned to each member to keep everyone accountable.
“We have to be accountable to ourselves,” said USG East Halls Senator Larry Santucci.
In other business, the senate voted to allocate $400 to suppliment the USG/Panhellenic Weekend Loop.
Fraternity Senator Mike King and Pollock/Nittany Halls Senator Lisa Fields, who sponsored the legislation, have decided to run the Weekend Loop for a nine-week trial period starting Feb. 5.
The new, improved Weekend Loop will have four stops, all of which are to be located under street lights, King said. The loop will also have a volunteer safety rider to assure perspective riders of their safety, he added.
Fields said she believes the trial period will take place during a time of demand.
“It is too cold to be walking all the way to Beaver (Avenue) to catch a Town Loop,” she said.
King and Fields assessed many of the problems that last year’s attempted Fraternity Loop ran into, and tried to prescribe remedies to make this loop more successful.
“This year’s will ultimately be a resounding success,” King said. “We will have advertised a week in advance and every sorority has been exposed to this through their chapter’s vote.”
The Panhellenic Council approved plans for the Weekend Loop at their meeting last night.