Following last week’s budget meeting, Point Park’s student government’s Finance Committee took to reallocating additional funds to four clubs and organizations requesting appeals.
The Feminist Collective, which encountered problems with its budget last meeting, saw its budget for the costs for a speaker continue to lack support.
Earlier in the semester, USG promised support for a speaker event. However, this monetary support was not upheld during the final budget period announced last week.
“As of right now, the speaker event is still in committee because there was no total agreed upon in committee,” Amber Mole, treasurer of USG, said.
During the first round of budget distributions, funding for conferences
was slashed due to a lack of funds allocated. This affected three clubs and organizations. After each budget allocation session, dissatisfied clubs are urged to request additional funds by requesting appeals, said Mole.
AdFed/PRSSA was the only club to take USG up on the offer of an appeal and received an additional $487 for half the registration and one hotel room of the PRSSA Regional Conference: Caffeinate Your Career.
Last month, USG’s pro tempore Shayna Mendez distributed a survey to students regarding if they prefer a shuttle destination of Trader Joe’s/Whole Foods or the Waterfront.
“For the Trader Joe’s shuttle service, I got a response back from Brad [Kovalcik, the director of Student Activities]…they’ve send me a tentative guide as to how they plan on doing everything,” Mendez said. “They’ll have a trial run starting in April.”
The trial run will happen during the first three Sundays in April, rather than the Waterfront shuttle, which runs Friday and Sunday.
Prior to the meeting, a student opened a Change.org petition requesting students to sign to signal their support for Point Park to have “free bus passes.”
A few years ago, USG held a referendum to see if students would want to pay the extra fee, said USG press secretary Emily Yount.
“We got an overwhelming negative response to that,” Yount said. “More students said no…than what we’ll have to pay extra to get it free. Most people have basically said that they wouldn’t use it enough to warrant that extra fee.”
Over the weekend, USG issued a press release outlining the different functions of Pioneer Community Day, an annual volunteer driven event hosted by USG each year.
“This year, the Pioneer Community Day Ad-Hoc Committee has partnered with three service organizations and volunteers will be spread across the Pittsburgh Area. These organizations are the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, Friends of the Riverfront and the Pittsburgh Chapter of Habitat for Humanity,” the press release read.
USG urges students to volunteer by signing up on OrgSync for the April 2 event, which will benefit the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.
