At Thursday night's SGA Senate meeting, representatives voted on the creation of an SGA scholarship worth $2,000. The award will be given to two students annually at the Organization Awards and Inauguration Ceremony.
According to Rachel Long, current executive vice president, the application will be available by Monday at the latest online and in the SGA office in Moseley 221A. Applicants must be current Elon students exhibiting the values of service and leadership with strong academic merit and a GPA of at least 3.5. A selection committee will interview applicants for the award, which can only be used for tuition.
In other news, representatives voted in favor of changes to the structure of the academic and organizational councils. A vote of 33-3 enacted the following changes to organizational representation in SGA:
[box] Organization Council: Academic - 1 representative Campus Rec - 1 Government - 1 Residence Life - 1 Honors - 1 Multicultural - 1 Media -1 Center for Leadership - 1 Performance - 1 Athletics - 1 Religious - 1 Club Sports - 1 Service - 2 Greek Life - 1
Academic Council: Elon College: The College of Arts and Sciences - 5 Martha and Spencer Love School of Business - 2 School of Communications - 2 School of Education - 1
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Furthermore, representatives voted against two proposed amendments, the first of which would change the number of freshman senators from five to two.
"I don't understand why we would want to cut out the freshmen," said Taylor Martin, senior class president, echoing many representatives' concerns that freshmen participation would decrease as a result. "To me, cutting out the freshmen would be like cutting off the trees at its root."
The second would have created an avenue for a student organization's representative to answer questions during the meetings of finance committees.
Executive Treasurer Nick Livengood also presented information about SGA's budget for the upcoming year, based on the project student enrollment and student activity fees. With an expected enrollment of 4,955 and a yearly student activity fee of $215, the total collection is expected to be $1,065325, of which SGA gets 51 percent. The remaining 49 percent is allocated to Student Life. After deduction of 2 percent for honor's societies and 5 percent for the contingency fund, SGA projects having $505, 284 to allocate to student organizations.
The budget for SGA's general account will be as follows:
[box] 2012-2013 SGA budget: Banquets: $4,500 Duplicating: $300 Homecoming: $20,000 Insurance: $200 Food: $800 Event advertising: $1,000 Supplies: $1,800 Telephone: $300 Student Travel: $500 Retreats: $5,000 Honorarium/Stipends: $20,800 Special Projects: $3,500 Total: $58,700 [/box]