The outdoor space between Gallahue Hall and the Holcomb Building will be a new study area for students by the beginning of next school year.

Student Government Association approved the project last Wednesday. The executive board has been working on it since last semester.

The new area will have tables with umbrellas and bar-height tables for studying, as well as lounge chairs and couches for recreational use, said Scott Nemeth, vice president of administration. Power outlets and Wi-Fi routers will also be installed to make studying in the area more convenient.

“It’s going to be left behind for students to use for years to come, and I don’t think there’s anything better than that,” Nemeth said.

During coffee chats and surveys, students expressed a desire to be outside more. With the Starbucks patio having a limited amount of space, the board decided on this patio project to add more outdoor soft space, Nemeth said.

The project as a whole will cost $100,000 to complete, said Derek Friederich, SGA vice president of finance.

After looking at what it could get for a variety of different price points, the board decided on the recently-passed budget, mainly because of the quality of the Wi-Fi and power sources.

The money will come from the rollover account, which stores leftover money from the SGA budget.

“Year after year, this amount accrues to an unnecessary large amount,” Friederich said. “There’s no reason to have several-hundred-thousand dollars just sitting in the account.”

In the past, money from this account has been used by other executive boards for other projects, including the Brita water filters and the bike share program.

“We aren’t doing this because SGA executives wanted to see this happen,” SGA President Mike Keller said. “It’s something students have been asking for.”

The project was relatively easy as the space was already available and easy to work with, Keller said. Students can expect to see progress on the area by commencement in May.

Future executive boards will probably look to add lighting to the area, Keller said. After students use the space for a few years, it will be easier to see what other things are in demand.

People have also talked about adding some sort of coffee kiosk or cart in the future so students working in the area wouldn’t have to walk all the way to Starbucks, Keller said.

The patio will hopefully offset the demand for more outdoor study space on the Starbucks patio, he said, which has proven difficult to work with due to space issues and negotiations with Aramark.

Butler University faculty are asking students to help bring public transportation to campus.

A public meeting with Indy Connect, central Indiana’s public transportation initiative, was scheduled for last night but was rescheduled due to inclement weather concerns.

Butler offered to shuttle 50 students to the meeting so they could offer their own opinions on the matter.

Indy Connect has a plan for bus and/or rail lines shown on a map found at www.indyconnect.org.

Rich Michal, executive director of facilities, said in a Faculty Senate meeting that he has been working with the Student Government Association, which has been working on a resolution to present at the meeting.

“Obviously we are concerned about this line,” Michal said. “We are encouraging folks to attend these meetings and express their opinion.”

The aspect of the plan that Butler is most concerned with is the “red line” that would run north and south through central Indiana.

The line would reach 25 miles from Carmel, past Butler, through downtown Indianapolis and south to Greenwood.

According to Indy Connect’s website, three potential routes for the line are along Meridian Street, College Avenue and Keystone Avenue.

Michal said Butler prefers the route that would go from Westfield to College Avenue.

However, the mass transit system is still not an absolute for central Indiana.

Legislation for the system has passed through the Indiana House in the past few weeks and now faces the Indiana Senate.

If legislation were to pass every level, Hamilton and Marion counties plan to begin voting on passing legislation themselves as soon as 2014.

The public meeting for Butler students is rescheduled for Tuesday, March 19, at the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation, 6501 N. Meridian St.

The Butler student body chose junior Craig Fisher to lead the Student Government Association in the 2013-14 school year.

The Election Oversight Committee released the verified results for the SGA presidential election Monday night.

Fisher is a pharmacy major native to Indianapolis. Both of his parents are Butler alumni.  He attributes his success to his involvement and experience.

“I think it’s great when students elect a leader that they know,” he said.

Fisher said he is currently facing the challenges of getting ready to serve the student body. The application process for vice presidents starts today and will conclude at the end of March.

“It’s a lot of work, but it’s worthwhile because this campus is so worthwhile,” Fisher said.

This year, 2,034 students voted in the SGA elections, according to the Election Oversight Committee’s report. Much of the voter turnout had to do with the use of social media, said Brittany Elkins, a four-year member of the EOC.

Every year the campaign has a completely different personality, she said. This year’s campaign was different than in previous years because numbers will not be released and the campaign period was shortened to 10 days.

“People are definitely more aggressive this year,” Elkins said.

The committee as a whole was a lot more active with planning activities, Elkins said. The shorter campaign time kept more people’s interest when it came to meeting and researching the candidates.

“Everyone that I’ve talked to did vote or had a candidate they wanted to win,” she said. “This year, people knew faces and names.”

The election bylaws, which Elkins helped write during her freshman year, are updated after each election. This year, the EOC will focus on eliminating loopholes and clarifying rules.

“It’s a living document,” Elkins said. “It changes with the people.”

During the election, Fisher’s and junior Katie Palmer’s campaign came under review by the EOC. As an athletics intern, Palmer printed her campaign logo on the back of the 3-point signs fans wave at every game. Fisher incorporated the trademarked Bulldog logo into his.

Both were considered minor infractions because the issues had never been brought up before, said Abigail Springer, a member of the EOC.

“We need to be very clear about who you can be endorsed by and what endorsement means,”  Springer said.

The EOC reviewed the violations to decide if they were worthy of disqualification. These issues were more convoluted than in years prior, when infractions would be smaller and more manageable,  Springer said.

“The election was clean in that each candidate argued for what they believed in and what they stood for,” she said.

After the election, the EOC will discuss changes that need to be made to the election bylaws. SGA Assembly must vote on any changes for next year.

Not releasing numbers helped make this election more positive than in previous years, Springer said. She attributes a lot of this election’s success to use social media, including the Social Media Blitz on the Friday the election started.

“More people voted,” she said, “so we were doing something right.”

Next Monday, the Butler University student body will vote for a new Student Government Association president.

Whoever it picks will be in charge of representing student interests and close to three quarters of a million dollars.

The members of SGA  hope this year’s election has a better turnout than previous years, said Abigail Springer, a member of the Election Oversight Committee.

“Our goal is to keep as many people as informed as possible,” she said.

Less than 1,000 people voted in last year’s election, Springer said. She said she hopes as many people as possible will research candidates and vote this year. The link will be delivered in an email Monday morning.

“The SGA president is very much your advocate, so you want to make sure it’s someone you agree with,” said SGA President Mike Keller.

The election kicked off on Friday with the Social Media Blitz, during which the candidates – (Craig Fisher, Josh Grant and Katie Palmer) — were allowed to officially begin their campaigns. Each candidate received $150 in campaign funds.

On Tuesday, the candidates participated in an informal meet-and-greet at Starbucks. Tonight, they will face off in a debate in the Reilly Room moderated by Levester Johnson, vice president of student affairs, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Candidates will answer questions from Johnson and students. Students can submit their questions by emailing sgaelections@butler.edu.

Candidates will discuss big-picture ideas, Keller said. Most will be about the university as a whole and major changes the candidates wish to make.

SGA recently voted to shorten the time of campaigning from two weeks to 10 days, which will help keep students’ attention span, Springer said.

The Student Government Association assembly will vote tomorrow on three recommended changes to the election process.

The Election Oversight Committee introduced the recommendations to assembly last Thursday.

The first recommendation shortens the campaign period from two weeks to 11 days. The second  allows each candidate to only run for one office. Finally, election results will not be released to protect the privacy of the candidates.

Evan Zahn, Election Oversight Committee chair, said the recommendations came from looking at the past year’s election and what could be improved or clarified.

Zahn said the committee hopes a shorter campaign period will make campaigns more exciting and bring better voter turnout.

He said the second recommendation was suggested to prevent someone from potentially winning multiple offices and not being able to fulfill all of those positions’ duties.

“There’s multiple scenarios that could play out, and we just want to avoid all those and have the best candidate for the position,” Zahn said.

Finally, Zahn said the third recommendation is the most controversial after the debate last year about whether or not to release the results.

The total percentage of how much of campus voted will be released, but the results will not be broken down and attributed to each candidate under the new recommendation.

“I’m very strongly against the election results being released,” Zahn said. “Yes, you could argue that other campuses do release the results, but we as a committee did not see any benefit to the results being released.”

He said it is sometimes hard to get people to run for class officer positions, and even SGA president. He said releasing election results could hurt the morale on campus if a vote were too close or hurt an individual if hardly anyone voted for him or her.

Abigail Springer, member of the public relations committee for election oversight, said the question of releasing election results was something that had never been questioned and something the committee  never worried about before last year.

“I feel very strongly about not releasing the numbers,” Springer said.

She said it would be easy for candidates to potentially be hurt by people talking about results, especially with social media.

“It’s the Butler Community of Care,” Springer said. “All of these issues were how do we make this election run more smoothly? And how do we protect our candidates and help our candidates achieve what they want to out of the election? Even if that means losing, then how do we encourage them to continue to be involved?”

Springer said she hopes assembly members believe in what the committee is working toward in terms of the recommendations and said she hopes things go well at assembly tomorrow.

SGA President Mike Keller said he is very intent about staying separate from the Election Oversight Committee but has mixed views on the recommendations.

“As a former candidate, I can really say that shortening the campaign period is a good idea,” Keller said. “That is a terrible two weeks for a candidate,

particularly an SGA president. It’s not good really for a student for that length of time. Personally, my grades didn’t do so well during the campaign.”

For the second recommendation, Keller said it’s a no-brainer to have each candidate only be able to run for one office. It was just never written in the rules.

Keller said the assembly and its constituents really have to think about what they want as far as open or closed election results.

“The biggest thing is that there had never been anything written about whether we do this or not,” Keller said. “That’s not good. We need to have rules and structure to point to and explain why we do these things.”

He said his personal opinion, though, is different than that of the committee.

“I have always felt there is little that goes wrong with an open election and open results,” Keller said.

As for the vote tomorrow, Keller said he hopes there is a great discussion about the recommendations but has a hunch that they will all be passed.

Zahn said he also has a positive outlook on the vote tomorrow.

“I’m very hopeful that the recommendations will be agreed upon because I think we have the best intentions for the campus, the potential candidates and the entire student body in mind when we made these propositions,” Zahn said.

If the recommendations are passed, Zahn said he does not foresee any challenges because they are settling this ahead of the election instead of during or after it, as was the issue last year.

While navigating campus backwards, university tour guides generally advise prospective freshmen that they will not need a car during their first year at Butler.

In 2011, almost 4,000 parking permits were issued to students, faculty and staff.

The students who do not bring their cars rely on their friends or the Student Government Association-provided shuttle on Friday and Saturday nights.

“When I came on a tour they said having a car is not necessary due to the shuttle,” freshman Courtney West said. “I didn’t think it’d be a big issue.”

In her parents’ mind, there was no need for West to leave campus. As she got more involved, however, she found not having a vehicle was causing her to miss events sponsored by the Public Relations Student Society of America on the north side of Indianapolis.

Issues like this are preventable, said Marielle Slagel, SGA vice president of operations. SGA will always team up with other events if transportation is needed. Organizations can also apply for grants with SGA for transportation.

“It’s a necessary thing for students to have that form of transportation,” Slagel said.

West uses the shuttles, but she said she wishes they ran during the week as well.

Creation of times are brought up, but there is not a great demand for shuttles during the week, Slagel said.

She said the buses tend to fill up on Friday and Saturday nights. Earlier in the evening there generally aren’t as many riders.

The Doublemap GPS system on the shuttles keeps track of the passengers and the location of the shuttle for those who wish to use it.

After the IndyGo route to Butler shut down in 2004 due to lack of use, SGA discussed hooking up the shuttle with the city transportation system. But the city buses have a lot of issues and can run later than scheduled.

“Butler works better having its own system,” Slagel said.

SGA is flexible about adding times if its surveys show a need for them.

There is also a shuttle available on Thursdays, as well as Zipcars.

SGA also provides transportation to and from SGA-sponsored and major events, such as the NCAA basketball tournament, concerts and the Super Bowl last year.

Navigating around campus has not been an issue for sophomore Tammy Nguyen, who uses a wheelchair.

“Our campus isn’t as huge as Indiana or Purdue,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen typically uses the shuttle, as she does not have a car.

She has never experienced a problem getting where she needs to go during the week.

If SGA receives more demand for transportation options during the week, it may change its schedule. Until then, students without cars will have to continue relying on their friends or making trips on Friday or Saturday nights.

The Student Government Association approved the largest budget in school history at last week’s assembly.

In a nearly unanimous vote, assembly members voted to pass the budget without question.

The organization’s budget is money received through student fees.

Each Butler University undergraduate pays $244 in student fees each year. Nearly $180 of that fee funds the SGA budget.

Butler’s record-setting class size contributed to the record-setting budget.

All university-recognized student organizations fall under SGA’s umbrella. Organizations can apply for grants to fund activities.

The money also covers concerts, late-night activities, the weekend shuttle and other programming events.

This year was the first where the executive board from last year voted on the budget during the summer retreat.

Last year’s assembly voted on each line item to approve the total budget.

This year, however, there was only a vote on the overall budget.

Assembly will meet this afternoon at 4:30 in Pharmacy Building, room 150. All students are welcome.

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.

A prospective student organization was denied endorsement by the Student Government Association last Wednesday, and is up for appeal today.

The National Society for Leadership and Success was presented before SGA executives and was denied endorsement.

SGA Assembly will now listen to the NSLS’s presentation, and will vote to pass it or not.

If the NSLS is approved in the SGA assembly, Irene Stevens, dean of student life, and PuLSE Office Director Caroline Huck-Watson will then review it.

Brian Hannon, the president of the NSLS if it is approved, understands SGA’s initial hesitation but says the organization will help Butler students.

“I think the group was initially rejected by the SGA board because they were worried the fees required to start the organization are too much and too corporate-based,” Hannon said in an email “It is their responsibility to protect the student body from getting scammed, so I understand their viewpoint.”

“The networking possibilities, nationally-recognized speakers and community service events all would be a huge benefit to this campus,” Hannon said.

SGA President Mike Keller said that when the NSLS presented, there were specific parts of the group’s constitution that caused concern.

The financial aspect of the constitution stated that an $85 admission fee to the group was required for each new student.

Of that $85, only $5 went back to Butler University, and $80 went to the national headquarters of the group.

Keller also said that a 3.0 GPA was required to be eligible for the group, which he said did not seem high enough to be considered an honors group, especially here at Butler.

“We really didn’t feel comfortable saying this was a good organization for the students because it would take away money from other groups that are more beneficial,” Keller said.

Marielle Slagel, SGA vice president of operations, said the whole presentation made the SGA executives question if this group could really benefit Butler.

“We are looking out for students and the campus community and are skeptical of the membership fee as well as the benefits that students would receive from the National Society of Leadership and Success,” Slagel said.

Even though Stevens has not seen the group this year, she said that the same group attempted to start a chapter here at Butler in the past.

Two years ago the NSLS made a presentation to Huck-Watson, and she raised her initial concerns to Stevens.

Huck-Watson researched the group online and told Stevens that it is a “for-profit” group, in which the NSLS had to raise thousands of dollars a year just to support its own programs.

The online website for the NSLS boasts 221,000 members yet its membership benefits said there is $100,000 available in scholarships. So if each member were to receive benefits. each individual would only receive $0.45.

“There are better ways to go for a leadership group than to pay a lot of money to a for-profit organization, in my opinion,” Stevens said.

The NSLS will present to SGA Assembly this afternoon.

It may always get brought up at Student Government Association assembly meetings, but the meeting frequency will not change any time soon.

SGA President Al Carroll said that the idea to move assembly to every other week as opposed to every week like it is now is brought up every year.

“The administration wouldn’t change it because it wouldn’t work,” Carroll said. “Student opinion and votes couldn’t be collected.”

Junior physical education and exercise science major Ariel Rudd said she believes it would be a good idea to change meeting frequency.

“Unfortunately, many SGA representatives don’t report back to their organizations, because a lot of what we cover in assembly is unchanging due to the frequency of the meetings,” she said. “I think more people would come to assembly if it were bi-weekly, and I think they would take the info back to their
organizations.”

However, many clubs and organizations meet
every other week, and if assembly was changed to meet bi-weekly, there would be no way to coordinate with every group, Carroll said during assembly earlier this month.

“It would be difficult because there would be a chance that SGA assembly would meet on the off weeks of these organizations,” sophomore arts administration and public relations major Allie Combs said. “Then the SGA representative would never be able to relay the information from assembly to their constituents, and that is the whole reason assembly exists in the first place.”

Kelsa Reynolds, vice president of operations for SGA, said that any type of business vote discussion would be delayed almost four weeks.

Anything in need of discussing needs to be brought up in advance before actually being discussed, she said, so if assembly was on a bi-weekly schedule, that business may be long forgotten by the time SGA
meets again.

“Considering how fast-paced our society is, for our student government to work at a pace different than the pace of the student body’s lives is inefficient and folly,” sophomore pharmacy major EJ Oldfield said. “Although some weeks this does mean shorter assembly due to a lack of discussion points, SGA is better off staying up-to-date with events on campus rather than being a week behind.”

If it were to change, Reynolds said word about anything going on would not get out, and few people on campus would know about any programming.

“SGA is all about effective communication, and if [assembly meetings] were to change, there would be a huge communication gap,” Reynolds said. “That’s not what SGA is about.”

CPA Chair Mike Tirman, said that members are always brainstorming different ideas on how SGA can be better, but he, with the rest of the executive board, understands that bi-weekly meetings would be a mistake.

“There’s a ton that goes on,” Tirman said. “We have to be careful.

“We have to keep the line of communication open, and assembly is the best way of doing that.”

Many of the SGA representatives agree with the executive board on the idea that it would be the wrong decision to change assembly to every other week.

Reynolds said SGA will be sticking to weekly meetings, and if next year’s officers want to, they can think about changing it next year.

SGA assembly is held every Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. in the Krannert Room.