The 104th ASUW Senate met for the last time on Tuesday. Eight pieces of legislation were passed as the senate’s final act.
Senate Bill #2557 “ASUW Support for WyASC Summer Leadership Conference,” saw debate on the the amount of money being used to fund the program. An initial $5,000 was proposed.
“Programming was skeptical of this bill because we thought everything was still up in the air,” Senator Jaynie Welsh said, “We weren’t really comfortable with allocating that money without knowing where it went to.”
WyASC, is the Wyoming Associated Student Council, which has a summer program for high school student leaders. The program will be held in Laramie this year for the first time from July 10 to July 14, according to their website.
“The goal is to gain retention and recruitment of these students on campus, this can prove as a welcoming,” Senator Joel Defebaugh, who is also a counselor in the program and abstained from the vote, said. “People who are leaders on campus have come from this organization. I labeled it in Budget and Planning as the ‘baby freshman senate.’”
Senator Courtney Thomson-Lichty said the $5,000 was a drop in the bucket and worth the money to provide further outreach to high schoolers.
“I think it’s worth it for the amount of payoff we’re going to get from this allocation,” Thompson-Lichty said. “It’s really a drop in the bucket in compared to a lot of allocations ASUW makes. I think it can go really far in recruiting and retaining folks at a very young age.”
The proposed fund would come directly from the ASUW reserve.
Arguments against the fund ranged from giving a program a blank check to not knowing if the students participating in WyASC would come back to UW.
“I’m not comfortable with giving them a $5,000 blank check and use it how they want to,” Senator Dusten Strock said. “I would feel comfortable with giving them money if the money was going to a specific purpose.”
Other senators voiced similar concerns.
“I understand that there’s a change that these high schoolers will have a chance of coming back to UW but there’s no guarantee of that,” Senator Andrew Potter said.
Senator Paul Drake moved to change the proposed $5,000 to $1,000 for the WyASC program.
“Let’s ask ourselves do we want to ask these students to come to UW,” Drake said. “If there’s a number that we would donate to them that is significantly less than $5,000 Let’s just talk about it.”
Senator Ben Wetzel argued that ASUW did not have to change the allocation of $5,000 to WyASC.
“It is .476 percent of the budget,” Wetzel said. “We spend just as much money on a lot of other things that are just for high schoolers, we have a high school leadership scholarship. The key is to support in this program and I think we need to invest in it wholehearted the first time to see if it’s successful.”
The amendment to fund the program for $1,000 passed.
Senate Bill #2557 passed 16 to 8 with one abstention.
