Last night marked the last official UPUA meeting of the semester, but the assembly had a lot of discussion ahead of them before the three hour meeting adjourned.
The lengthiest portion of the meeting was devoted to discuss the creation of a University Budget Commission to analyze the university's budget.
At-Large Representative Elias Warren said the goal of the commission was to take a deeper look into the general funds listed on Penn State's budget website, budget.psu.edu.
Warren (sophomore-management) motioned to move the date of the report -- that would detail a course of action for the assembly to take -- the commission would present to the assembly until Sept. 26, instead of the second meeting of the semester, Sept. 5.
The legislation passed to create the commission but not before representatives from the Council of Commonwealth Student Government collaborated their discontent into a comment from CCSG Internal Affairs Director DJ Ryan.
Ryan (senior-communication arts and sciences) said the first time he or anyone from CCSG had heard about the legislation was Wednesday morning after reading an article about it.
CCSG President-elect Ben Clark received a phone call from Ryan on Wednesday and immediately walked over to the UPUA office to discuss the legislation. After providing his opinion to representatives, Clark (junior-accounting) said he felt the commission would be more effective if all three student governments worked together with a group of more than 90,000 students instead of just UPUA's constituents.
Clark said he saw some adjustments to the original legislation when he attended the meeting Wednesday night.
But the UPUA assembly felt that it was important to push forward this piece of legislation so they have the time to analyze the information over the summer and get the findings to the assembly as soon as possible.
"The budget website they keep talking about is not going to go away," Clark said. "And tuition rates won't happen until appropriation rates are set mid-summer."
Also during the meeting, Smeal College of Business Representative Rishi Kumar Mittal gave a special presentation on the downtown housing database the sixth assembly had been working on.
Mittal (sophomore-business finance) said the database -- that includes a roommate finder, sublets, message boards and links to other resources -- would cost around $8,000 for UPUA to pay the outsourcing costs.
The goal is to have the database up and running in the fall before the rush of students look for off-campus housing.
Three other pieces of legislation were also passed at the meeting, all passing unanimously. The SAFER Act will encourage the assembly to speak to legislators to promote HR 1523, which tracks "the testing and processing of evidence from rape cases."
Now, UPUA representatives will encourage members of Congress to vote in favor of the legislation.
The Princeton Review contract was also renewed through legislation at the meeting, and will now offer more exams to students at a discounted rate.
Finals Frenzy will take place on Friday on the first floor of the HUB where UPUA will hand out donuts, apples, blue books and pens to any passersby.
