The SGA passed five pieces of legislation and sent three to committees in its meeting Thursday.
Resolution encouraging UA to add bus stops to accommodate CrossingPoints students — passed
The SGA passed a resolution urging the Department of Transportation Services to add a Crimson Ride bus stop at or around University Boulevard and Anna Avenue.
According to Aubrei Grisaffe, the assistant director of disability affairs, the legislation aims to increase accessibility for CrossingPoints students from their housing in Presidential Village to the Hillard Building on Anna Avenue.
CrossingPoints is a program meant to serve students with “intellectual and developmental disabilities,” according to the resolution.
“I would love to see more awareness about the students of CrossingPoints and the CrossingPoints program,” Grisaffe said. “I think visibility is one of the most important things to ensuring accessibility on an interpersonal level.”
Resolution encouraging SGA to explore Counseling Center scholarships — sent to committee
The SGA sent a resolution to the Student Affairs Committee that would charge the DEI and Student Affairs committees with exploring possibilities “for creating a limited, needs-based scholarship” for UA counseling services.
The executive committees would then submit a report of their findings to the Senate by the last 2023 Senate session.
Eleanor Israel, the resolution’s author and a senator for the College of Arts and Sciences, said she got the idea for the piece from conversations in the spring 2023 elections, during which candidates started a conversation about alleviating counseling costs.
According to the Counseling Center’s website, the fee for a counseling session is $15 after the first session, while other services, like group sessions, are free.
Israel said that in the past, former executive vice president candidate Elizabeth Prophet had discussed the possibility of using scholarships to cover counseling costs.
“I’m hoping to build on the conversations that happened last election season,” Israel said. “I think that establishing an official scholarship fund is a really viable long-term option to alleviate those costs.”
Approval of student organization funding and ratifying SGA budget — both passed
The SGA passed an act to approve student organization funding requests for September and a bill to approve the SGA budget for the 2024 fiscal year.
Approved student organization funding totaled $28,577.81 for eight organizations, with the Women’s Wheelchair Basketball Club receiving $7,500 and the Men’s Wheelchair Basketball Club receiving $6,321.
Vice President for Financial Affairs Eric Doh said he hopes student organizations come to the Financial Affairs Committee for funding instead of only raising funds themselves.
“We’re really going to try to continue marketing FAC and showing organizations that we have money that we want to give them to help them expand,” Doh said.
The SGA allocated $73,270 for the 2024 Executive General Fund and $200,000 to the FAC to reimburse organizational expenditures.
