The Student Association Senate voted on recommendations for segregated fee allocations during a marathon session that started Sunday evening and ended early Monday morning.

At its final meeting of the semester, which lasted eight hours, the Senate approved or amended recommendations for students organizations.

The Senate Finance Committee (SFC) made the recommendations in regard to segregated fees. Student segregated fees are taken from every student’s tuition and go to fund organizations and programs throughout the university.

One of the best-attended meetings of the semester, members of various student organizations, including the entire Panther Dance Team, waited for hours to hear the financial fate of their group.

The main topic of what SA Vice President Robby Schuettpelz called the most important SA meeting of the semester didn’t begin until two hours after the meeting started.

The Senate first had to confirm three new senators for approval. After senior Rick Stolz was appointed to a vacant Letters & Sciences senator position, the Senate went into a rare closed session before approving sophomore Kristina Zahn and junior Joseph Ohler for two vacant at-large Senate seats.

Members of the audience fought off sleep with caffeine and senators used laptop computers to instant message, look at their Facebook pages and get some online shopping done while the meeting refused to end.

The SFC allocation discussion started with a long and contentious debate on funding for the LGBT Resource Center.

Sen. Drew Baryenbruch proposed cuts in the LGBT Resource Center with the idea that graduate students, instead of a full-time director, could run the LGBT Center, along with other resource centers.

Though many senators supported the possibility of giving graduate students real world experience, ultimately the Senate voted to stick with the SFC’s original recommendation.

This would be a common theme the rest of the night, as long and heated debates ended with the Senate approving the original allocation amounts the SFC came up with two weeks ago.

In fact, the only organization the Senate approved for a different amount of funding than the SFC originally approved was the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC), which received a 55-cent increase from what the SFC originally recommended.

State law mandates the Senate to be viewpoint neutral when making financial decisions. The Senate’s neutrality was called in to question when senators who are seated on SAC and work for the Center for Volunteerism & Student Leadership proposed more funding for those organizations.

The meeting took its toll on everyone in the room, regardless of position. Speaker Raymond Duncan often had to take time to see if what senators were proposing was legal.

It was a stressful night for most involved. Some senators left in the middle of debates, and many weren’t sure whether or not the Union, which normally closes at midnight on Sundays, would stay open long enough for the meeting to end. The meeting was eventually adjourned at around 2 a.m.

The next step is for SA President Russ Rueden to review the Senate’s recommendations and either approve or veto them. If he uses his veto power, the allocations would be up for debate in the Senate again.

The next SA Senate meeting is Jan. 29 in the Union, Room W191.

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