It was a long night in room 116 of the Eppley Center, where ASMSU met this past Thursday night. Despite the length of time ASMSU met, there was not a lot achieved.
There were several items the association planned to go through, however, only one was voted on and another was tabled.
Still, other aspects of the meeting went as planned. For example, MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon spoke to the General Assembly.
Simon spoke to ASMSU about topics from higher education funding to issues of sexual assault.
Opening with the subject of higher education funding, Simon discussed some of the concerns she faces right now about the university receiving money from the state government.
Simon mentioned a recently introduced proposal from the governor to lower the income tax, and how this could affect the money that goes toward higher education.
“The thing that you need to worry about, that I’m worried about, is in the context of what the governor thinks is the state’s revenue,” President Simon said. “Yesterday, there was introduced a proposal to reduce the income tax, and that puts a hole in the revenue, if it were to be enacted, of up to $1 billion dollars.”
Simon said if this proposal were to pass, it is unknown where replacement funds would come from.
“If that is passed, question mark, the question will be, where will the replacement revenue come from?" Simon said. "In the appropriations process yesterday, in the hearing, there was no clear understanding of that.”
Following this, Simon spoke about some other issues facing campus right now, but at the end of her time speaking, she got to the one topic likely to be on every Spartans' mind right now: sexual assault.
Simon addressed the ways sexual assault has been relevant at MSU and how the university has dealt with it, but she also mentioned the scope of this issue.
“These are issues that are a national problem, society problem, not simply an MSU problem,” President Simon said.
Following Simon’s address to ASMSU, the organization moved on to agenda items. The first item on the agenda was regarding Culturas de las Razas Unidas’ Dia de la Mujer Conference.
CRU was requesting funding from ASMSU to put on the conference, but the GA was not willing to hand out the roughly $22,000 CRU requested.
GA members spent an extended period of time questioning CRU on whether they could cover costs for the event.
After grilling CRU about the amount of their request, the GA went into closed session for discussion of the funds request.
Once the public was allowed back into the meeting, ASMSU voted in the request and very narrowly approved the request for CRU.
The State News reached out to CRU for comment on this matter, but they declined to comment.
The deliberation took up a large portion of the time usually allotted for ASMSU meetings, so other agenda items had to be overlooked.
The next major item brought up was the Safe Ride Initiative. The same plan for the pilot program that was presented to the GA was presented to the Finance Committee last week.
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Discussion of the cost-effectiveness of the program quickly began. GA member Max Donovan, a representative from the College of Social Science, brought up a point to quiet the debates about the cost.
“This isn’t hard guys, we can do math,” Donovan said. “You pay $2 for this tax, $2 per semester. If you use this service one time instead of taking an Uber, instead of taking a Lyft, if you use this service three times instead of taking the bus, you will have made your money back.”
In the midst of debate about the initiative, ASMSU President Lorenzo Santavicca informed the GA that they could continue to discuss the initiative, but there would be no vote as too many people had left already.
And so the saga of Safe Ride continues, as it will not be voted on until the next GA meeting, which will be on March 2.
At the next GA meeting, ASMSU will also address the additional agenda items that were not recognized because of time issues.
