A student walks into a coffee shop in the evening, expecting to get some work done in a quiet and caffeinated environment. Instead, that student is greeted with the shrill vibrations of acoustic guitar and the voice of a nationally-touring artist.

Thanks to the Student Government Association Program Board’ Coffeehouse concert series , such concerts and events have become a monthly occurrence at Butler University.

Casey Crescenzo, singer and founder of indie rock band The Dear Hunter, delivered a solo acoustic performance at the on-campus Starbucks last Wednesday night.

The performance attracted many students, despite the artist’s “up-and-coming” status.

“I thought it was a pretty good turnout for someone that not a lot of people have heard of,” junior Coffeehouse co-chair Kiefer Berry said. “I thought he actually did very well with what we had out. It ended up sounding really good, and it was a pretty good show.”

Crescenzo said he was humbly pleased performing at Butler. This was his first visit to campus, and he said that he was initially disillusioned when pulling up to campus and parking in front of a fraternity house, stating that he had always related colleges and fraternities to what he had seen in movies.

After a warm welcome by Coffeehouse students and the audience that attended his show, his perceptions were immediately changed.

“I always get the feeling that I don’t deserve how nice people treat me, so it was just awesome, and everyone’s been really nice,” Crescenzo said. “I could never afford to go to college, and I was not smart enough to go to college, and then I get paid to come and just do the dumb thing that I know how to do in a college, so I feel lucky.”

For some students, this performance was a pleasant first exposure to Crescenzo.

Senior Christen Schwarz came to Starbucks on Wednesday to study.

Much to her surprise, she discovered a new artist, whom she described possessing a vocal style “kind of like Mumford & Sons.”

“I walked in and I was like, ‘Oh no, what am I going to do now?” she said. ”But it was pretty cool to come in and see it.”

Junior Coffeehouse co-chair Elissa Chapin said acquiring such an artist really isn’t so tedious.

“It’s really not as hard as it seems,” said Chapin. “I go onto Facebook, look at their information, find their booking agent and send them a professional email.”

Given Coffeehouse’s past repertoire of notable indie performers, Chapin believes that the next few Coffeehouse shows will not disappoint.

“Sometimes we get artists that are local, but we’ve worked with Walk The Moon before and after they were signed,” said Chapin. “We’ve worked with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. and The Cab, just to name a few.”

The next Coffeehouse performances are on Oct. 25, Nov.12 and Dec. 6. Artist and concert information will be revealed closer to the dates.

Butler University’s Student Government Association will vote this afternoon to approve the largest budget in the organization’s history.

More than $748,000 collected from student fees will be allocated to student organizations and programs.

Each year, Butler students pay approximately $288 in student fees. About $180 goes to SGA.

Representatives from Butler’s more than 150 student organizations will vote on how that money will be allocated.

There are six boards that fall under the SGA umbrella—Council on Presidential Affairs, the Finance Executive Board, Public Relations, Operations, R.E.A.C.H. and Program Board.

SGA’s budget covers expenses accrued by each of those boards. It also funds—among other things—class activities, club sports, a presidential initiative, basketball trips and a volunteerism budget.

Assembly will go through the budget line by line to determine the final figure.

The executive board has made suggestions to this year’s budget, which was originally determined over the summer.

This year’s proposed budget increased by more than $45,000 from last year.

Each student is represented by at least one person in the assembly. Residential halls, Greek houses and every university-recognized student organization are required to have at least one representative.

The Collegian will report the final budget after this afternoon’s meeting.

SGA assembly meetings are open to every student. The meeting is today in PB150 at 4:30.

The Student Government Association’s office in Atherton Union has a new look.

The door was open, and boxes were scattered everywhere as SGA President Mike Keller stood atop a step stool, remodeling the room.

“I have no complaints about last year’s SGA group,” Keller said, “but this year we’re going to focus on some new goals.”

Keller said SGA wants to make changes that are more than cosmetic.

“We’re working with Butler IT right now to make a nicer, easier-to-use website,” Keller said.

Keller said the website will be online in September, and students can volunteer to receive a weekly newsletter via email.

Keller said his biggest goal was being physically accessible.

“I really want students to feel like they can just stop by the SGA office any time,” Keller said. “Our door will always be open.”

After two summer retreats and multiple mini assemblies, SGA has come up with a list of over 100 goals for the 2012-13 school year.

“We definitely want to continue on the great foundation that was left for us,” said Scott Nemeth, vice president of administration. “We’re going to inherit some really cool grants and projects this year.”

Those projects include new Brita water stations as part of the Council on Presidential Affairs Green Operations sector and a new bike rental system that will give students the opportunity to check out bikes.

“We want to make more big projects out of student ideas,” Nemeth said.

SGA has already begun scheduling coffee chats in Starbucks, where students will get a chance to talk to SGA and Butler officials about changes and ideas they would like to see implemented.

SGA also wants to distribute more surveys to students to help prioritize the projects for the year.

One of SGA’s largest annual projects is the Butlerpalooza concert.

Butlerpalooza is scheduled for Sep. 7, and while the artist may soon be revealed program board chair Stevan Tomich said he is sworn to secrecy.

“I really can’t tell anything, but this year there will be an after party in the Reilly Room after the concert,” Tomich said.

Time will tell if SGA is ready for its latest challenges, but Keller said he has tremendous faith in the group.

“I’m just constantly amazed by this new group’s enthusiasm,” Keller said.

“If we keep it up, I really think that we’ll be able to make some positive changes to the campus this year.”

Classes are wrapping up, exams are approaching and Program Board’s concerts committee and MEISA, the recording industry club, are providing students with one last shebang.

The annual spring concert line-up was announced Wednesday. Dev, Zion I, DJ Benzi, Shiny Penny and the Critical Shoes and The Tribe and Big Cats! will perform at the first Butlerpalooza, scheduled for April 21 on the mall.

“We wanted to do something different, so we’ve been planning this since July,” said Maddie Silverstein, junior and concerts co-chair. “We wanted to do a festival because we wanted to be able to diversify the music that Butler students listen to.”

Headliner Dev is a hip-hop based artist that most students have probably listened to on the radio. She’s performed on hits such as “Like a G6” and “In the Dark.”

Silverstein said her committee was very excited to get Dev as its headliner. Silverstein also liked that they had a woman headlining.

Zion I is also a hip-hop group that focuses on “futuristic” sound and socially conscious lyrics. DJ Benzi is a fairly well-known disc jockey who has mixed songs by both Mike Posner and Diplo.

Shiny Penny and the Critical Shoes is a local rock band from Kokomo. Sophomore recording industry studies major Brad DiCarlo does vocals and plays the guitar and drums in the band.

They previously played in the Reilly Room in February.

“This is one of the more legitimate shows we’re going to be able to play,” DiCarlo said. “Dev is a pretty big artist, so we’re excited to share a stage with her.”

Finally, The Tribe and Big Cats! is a rap group that sticks to the idea that rap can be fun without being stupid, and meaningful without getting too heavy.

“We’re trying to push rap places it hasn’t been before,” Spencer Wirth-Davis (or Big Cats) said.

While the band members have never played in Indianapolis before, they’re always excited to play at a college.

“You know you’re going to have a good built-in crowd,” Wirth-Davis said. “It’s always well-promoted and well-run. College shows are always a lot of fun for us.”

As for the rest of the show, Silverstein said it’s been a great experience for herself and her two co-chairs, Kyle Wehr and Kevin Hansen.

“There have been a lot of speed bumps, but it forced us to think on our feet and work with the administration,” she said. “We’re really happy with the outcome. We’re hoping we’ll be able to do the same thing next year.”

The festival will last from 4:30 to 10 p.m. on April 21 on the south mall close to Jordan Hall. The concerts committee is also planning on bringing food trucks to the festival, although none have yet been lined up for the event.

The recent struggle for Student Government Association President-elect Mike Keller to find nominees for the position of vice president of diversity programming has shed some light on the issue of filling SGA vacancies—and how best to push and represent diversity on Butler University’s campus.

SGA usually requires that applicants for vice president of diversity programming have served on R.E.A.C.H. before running for the position, but nobody from R.E.A.C.H. stepped up to run.

Keller then extended the applicant pool to the general campus population. He said that the current four applicants exceeded his expectations and that he expects more.

Perhaps more SGA positions should be opened in a similar fashion, to give those not involved with SGA a better chance to represent the greater student body.

The fact that a position that influences the administration on how to diversify Butler is usually closed off from the general public makes very little sense to me.

I think this open applicant pool for vice president of diversity programming should be a permanent change.

The position ought to be held by a student who is open-minded and driven to educate the Butler community on diverse cultures, ways of life and frames of mind.

Not to say that the people in R.E.A.C.H. do not strive to do these things, but when no one steps up to a leadership position, they show that those who are part of an organization are not always those fit to run it.

Keller said that open applicant pools work better for some positions than others if the applicant has qualifications matching the position.

However, Keller said that some positions like those on the Council on Presidential Affairs, Program Board and Finance Board are areas that require experience in order to effectively lead them.

Butler may not be famous for being an ethnically diverse campus, with a vast majority of the student body being classified as “white non-Hispanic.”

However, there are plenty of students here, both inside and outside of SGA, who are diverse in their ethnicity, in ways of life and in schools of thought.

If an applicant for vice president of diversity programming is white, black or even neon green, it does not matter.  If he or she is open-minded and care about educating the Butler community on diversity, he or she should be able to run.

MORE ON THE SGA BUDGET

Every year, each Butler University student pays about $288 in student activity fees.

Every year, about $180 of those fees go to Student Government Association.

And every year, SGA’s executive board and SGA representatives are faced with the task of using those funds to engage students with programs that are both beneficial and utilized.

This year, SGA is working with a budget of $703,752—or about $178 for each of the 3,953 students who pay student activity fees.

Over the summer, members said they  looked at last year’s budget to see which activities or line items work and which have room to be changed, according to cost and benefit to the community.

“If an organization wants to do more stuff, the budget will reflect it,” Dan Schramm, SGA vice president for finance, said. “At the same time, if they find something that didn’t really work, the budget will also reflect that.”

While $703,752 may sound like a large amount of money, SGA President Al Carroll said he intends to oversee an assembly that uses all of that money wisely during the year.

“You should be seeing $700,000 worth of programming on campus throughout the year,” Carroll said. “That should happen, and if it’s not happening, we’re not doing our jobs right.”

The largest portion of the budget—$379,500, or about $96 per student—goes to fund Program Board, an operating board under the SGA umbrella that oversees organizations like films committee, concerts committee and late-night programming. Program Board works to create programs that will engage and entertain members of the student body.

Carroll said that once SGA has planned an event, advertised it and encouraged students to participate, the responsibility falls on the student.

“Everything that SGA does, you have an impact on it, so you should want to get your money’s worth,” Carroll said. “There are a lot of people that pay for these events, and they just don’t go.”

Money to cover SGA expenses—including the first six weeks of programming, executive board stipends and the presidential initiative—makes up $115,957 of the budget.

In the Sept. 14 assembly meeting, members raised questions regarding the $8,000 budgeted for executive board stipends. The six vice presidents of SGA, the president and the parliamentarian each receive compensation for serving the year in that position.

“I don’t understand why you guys are being paid to do work that I feel anyone in the room could do,” senior Chris Beaman said.

Council on Presidential Affairs Chair Mike Tirman said that the time and effort put into the organization could potentially take away from the opportunity of having a part-time job.

“I spend eight hours a day working on CPA stuff, whether it be in meetings, talking with people about their concerns or planning events,” Tirman said “I do not think that the stipend is unnecessary.”

The $14,000 budgeted for the presidential initiative is money that the president can use to fund special projects on campus.

At the same meeting, Carroll said that his presidential initiative fund would go toward more diversity programs on campus.

“It gives me an opportunity to highlight that program,” Carroll said.

The largest portion of the SGA expenses budget funds the operation of the SGA shuttles that run every weekend and to the airport for breaks.

“The shuttle is something that is very beneficial to the student body,” Carroll said. “We are offering something that could appeal to just about every member of the student body.”

The $35,800 put into the miscellaneous budget currently funds the taxi service at the HRC, the readership program and the volunteerism budget—a budget that doubled with a vote on Sept. 21.

An item added to this year’s budget is funding to cut costs of any basketball trips that SGA would offer students. Last year, SGA was able to offer a limited number of spots for students to attend the NCAA Men’s Final Four games in Houston. The cost to each student was around $100. SGA footed the rest of the bill, which averaged about $150 per student.

“That was one event that if you attended, you would have had your money back in one time,” Carroll said. “One event.”

It was noted at the Sept. 14 assembly that this added budget wouldn’t completely cover the costs of the trips, but it would help cut the costs.

“We never expected these costs last year,” SGA for operations Kelsa Reynolds said at the meeting. “By adding this in, we know we have some money set aside in case we need it.”

While everything in the budget has been voted on and approved, assembly members can make amendments to the budget at any time.