The Daily Gamecock

Recap: Student Senate talks protests, budget changes in first fall semester meeting

The Student Senate discussed the instigations by anti-BLM protesters and the changes to the Student Government budget in its first meeting of the semester on Wednesday. 

The meeting was held in the Russell House Theater to follow social distancing guidelines.

Student Body President Issy Rushton opened discussion of these issues with a statement regarding the visiting protestors. 

“I made many statements, but I, what I want to say is that I think it was absolutely disgusting of them. And we don't stand for that as a university, nor as a student government, and I hope that we don't stand for it as a senate either,” Rushton said.

Rushton will be meeting with the university’s administration Thursday to discuss these protestors’ First Amendment rights and has tasked her government relations team with “looking into” hate crime legislation within South Carolina. 

South Carolina is one of only three states with no racially-oriented hate crime laws. 

Several student senators announced plans to deal with the aftermath of the day’s protest, as well as the possibility of more in the future. Second-year political science and theatre student Asaru Buffalo emphasized transparency with the student body in publicizing information about the protestors.

“The thing that I'm looking to really signal boost now is just to get the message out of how to engage when these situations happen. There are right ways to go about and wrong ways to go about it,” Buffalo said.

Buffalo also aims to spread information regarding the instigators themselves and where students can go to avoid them over social media and GarnetGate. 

Senator Whitney Garland, chairman of the Student Life Committee, is focused on aiding students upset by these events through mental health check-ins. 

“We have students from all different backgrounds,” Garland, a fourth-year social work student, said. “And there should not be people on our campus that are allowed to spew hate speech at those populations and are allowed to actively discriminate against our students.” 

But creating anything beyond a resolution within the Senate on this issue will take time, owing to the newness of the issue and the amount of research needed, Garland said. 

Additionally, COVID-19 has affected Student Government’s ability to hold certain events, lowering the amount of money used during the Fall 2020 semester.

In a proposed new budget for the Fall 2020 semester, which has yet to be approved, events that require travel, such as Freshman Council’s $4,650 off-campus retreat, and in-person events, such as Carolina Closet’s $150 fashion show, would be removed from the budget. 

These funds would then go into other departments, such as advertising, which would see a $150 dollar boost, or into the fall escrow, a $5,634 pool of funds not to be used until Spring 2021. Treasurer Caden Askew said in an email that “there is no current internal need” for the funds. 

For more detail, see Student Government’s Live Budget, which does not yet reflect these changes, and the introduced legislation for the budget changes, which does.

Editor's Note: Student Body Treasurer Caden Askew was approved by the Student Senate on Wednesday to serve on the Board of Student Publications and Communications. The Board of Student Publications and Communications serves as the publisher for The Daily Gamecock. Student appointments to the board are made by the student body president with a majority vote from the Student Senate.


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