The Student Government Association of Point Park University (SGA) passed the budget for Spring II funding at their meeting on Monday in the JVH. An official breakdown of how much money went to which clubs will be found in the minutes on PointSync when they are published on Monday, March 16th. Overall, SGA provided $17,888.92 in funding to 22 organizations. The only funding that is still up in the air, however, is one $150 request for emergency funding from the SAEM club, who wanted to use the money to buy five tickets to a Cleveland Cavaliers game to give away to its members. The controversy surrounding the tickets centered around a financial request guideline that states that money is not supposed to be used for giveaways. The tickets, however, were not to be randomly given away, but given to certain students who requested them. In the end, the legislative body decided that it was a matter for the finance committee to handle.

The meeting’s open floor consisted only of an impromptu speech by SGA advisor, Dean Gieseke, who asked students what SGA was all about, besides helping the students of Point Park. After calling on a few legislative body members, Gieseke stressed that SGA was also about the experience for the senators, and part of making change and building those experiences was taking part in student life and SGA outside of the SGA legislative body meetings. He noted that most change does not occur in congress, or what students see on C-SPAN, but in what the senators do outside of the meetings, and he encouraged the legislative body to be more involved in making change outside of the regular meeting times by fulfilling their office hour requirements and attending their committee meetings.