Despite a major setback posed Friday by the Student Activity Fee Board, University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) President Gavin Keirans vowed to keep fighting for his proposed Legal Services program, which would provide free legal consultation to University Park students.
The board voted to keep a regulation in
the Student Activity Fee Handbook that restricts the "hiring of legal services" from being funded by the Student Activity Fee.
But that won't stop Keirans (junior-business management), who said he has already contacted Vice President for Student Affairs Damon Sims about meeting later this week to discuss the matter. Keirans said he will also meet with the UPUA chairpersons and talk with Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG) President George Khoury.
"I think that a compromise can be made," Keirans said. "It's going to take some conversations to make that a reality."
The final vote tallied seven votes for keeping the restriction, four votes to remove it and one uncommitted vote. Chairman of the Assembly Jack Rayman voted to remove the restriction, but his vote did not count because his vote is only recognized to break ties.
After the votes were tallied, Keirans dropped his pen, leaned back in his chair and threw his arms in the air while UPUA Chairman of the Assembly Ralph Crivello put his hand over Keirans' shoulder.
Crivello said there would need to be a two-thirds majority vote to remove the restriction.
"We're going to make sure we do it," Keirans said of the program.
Keirans and Crivello (senior-chemical engineering) engaged in a heated discussion with Khoury and CCSG's Student Affairs Director Nicholas Borsuk about precedents of funding.
Borsuk (junior-history) said Student Affairs previously funded a program similar to Legal Services that was cut. If Legal Services gets funding from the student activity fee, Borsuk, Khoury and University Park Allocations Committee President Kendra Carr said it would set a precedent that the fee could be used to fund other programs previously financed by Student Affairs.
Borsuk added if the student activity fee funds Legal Services, other programs funded by the fee would be cut.
Keirans said he hoped the student activity fee would only need to pay for half of the program and Student Affairs would pay for the other half. Borsuk, Khoury and Carr all voted to keep the restriction and said funding for the program should not come from the student activity fee.
"This is beyond funding," Borsuk said. "This is a philosophical difference in what the meaning of the fee is."
Khoury (senior-chemical engineering) questioned the "established need" for the program. Keirans said there was a "clear need" for it, adding he campaigned on enacting the program and was elected with a majority of 52 percent of the vote.
Khoury didn't buy his argument.
"Barack Obama campaigned on a lot of things," he said. "But reality hits and you can't do something you want to do."
