By Stephen George
Senate to convene tonight
The Student Government Association Senate will convene tonight at 7 p.m. in the Floyd Theatre to discuss business both old and new, including the much-debated Adult Commuter Center-Evening Student Services (ACCESS) and Multicultural Programming Fund proposals.
Over the past several weeks, debate has raged over SGA’s plans to close the ACCESS center due to a lack of funding.
SGA “bought” the ACCESS center from the university two years ago and has since been funding it, providing just over $90,000 this year to account for the center’s two paid staff members and the programs it offers, which include student workshops. The senate is expected to decide this evening on a proposal with which to move forward. According to SGA officials, several proposals have been offered.
Also on the agenda is the Multicultural Programming Fund, which has generated multitudes of controversy, both in SGA and among members of the African American community at U of L.
The Multicultural Programming Fund is based on the African American Programming Fund, which was established in 1999 after student Yinka Oyekunle was removed from a Porter Scholars meeting by FBI and Secret Service agents who thought he was a suspect in a counterfeiting ring. Oyekunle was cleared shortly thereafter.
The incident set off a chain of head-butting between the African American community and the administration, which culminated in a list of demands authored by Dr. Ricky L. Jones and Dr. Ede Warner on behalf of the Louisville Chapter of the Black Radical Congress. The African American Programming Fund is a result of those demands.
The question at hand is who will control the African American Programming Fund if the new Multicultural Programming Fund is adopted. As established in 1999, the African American Programming Fund, composed of $10,000 from the university president and $10,000 from SGA, is controlled by a committee of students with a vested interest in how the money is spent. Under the Multicultural Programming Fund proposal, another $10,000 from the president and $10,000 from SGA would be added to the fund to account for other minority groups on campus. SGA’s portion of the funding would be overseen by the Senate Finance Committee, which lacks an African American member.
The SGA portion of the African American Programming Fund is currently in limbo, and is thus frozen. Dr. Mordean Taylor-Archer is acting as overseer to the president’s $10,000.
Little was accomplished at the last senate session on October 8, during which audience members overran parliamentary procedure and argued directly with both senators and senior SGA officials.
Although the raucous meeting was uncharacteristic, several senators showed their disdain for the way in which SGA conducted the session, which ran for nearly four hours.
