After a bill passed by the Student Association Monday night, comedian Jon Stewart may be headed to Syracuse University.

The SA assembly passed the bill, without President Travis Mason in attendance, which will secure a $30,680 loan from the Finance Board’s contingency fund to possibly bring Stewart to campus.

Mason was absent due to illness.

‘We’ve been in contact with his agents and upstate New York is an area he likes,’ said Chad Bender, University Union Speakers chair.

Tickets for a Stewart appearance at Cornell University sold out in five hours and brought in thousands of dollars in revenue.

Andrew Urankar, SA comptroller, said UU Speakers has every intention of paying back the loan from the event’s profits. But if they did not, the money would be put back into the contingency fund at the end of the semester.

SA allocated $30,768 of the $60,000 available in the contingency fund, which is available to student organizations in case an event ends up costing more than previously planned due to an unexpected increase that is out of the group’s control.

SA also allocated $50,600 from the $200,000 special programming fund to University Union’s Block Party in May. The special programming fund allows the Finance Board to fund events they were previously unable to completely fund or unable to fund at all. Block Party will now receive $150,000 for a $176,000 request.

‘The way they’ll be funded it is not interfering with the funding of other groups,’ Urankar said. ‘A lot of other groups who came back in the appeals process received funding.’

SA also passed a bill to allocate $0 for a $63,365.19 request for a tier two concert, an artist who would cost approximately $50,000 in talent costs. The tier two concert was not funded because the event was scheduled around the same time as both Block Party and Stewart’s possible appearance in April.

No members of UU Concerts were present at the meeting, but Urankar said he understood why.

‘They knew what the recommendation was going to be,’ he said.

Student groups must submit applications for special programming funds six weeks prior to the event and added, Urankar said. With only a few weeks left until Spring Break, time is running out for groups to submit requests.

‘Any events before April 4 we won’t be able to fund, which is a significant amount of what is left for the semester,’ Urankar said. ‘If we don’t receive anything by Spring Break we won’t be able to fund it.’

There is also less programming in the latter half of the semester due to finals and preparation for graduation, Urankar said.

‘As students, we’re more focused on finishing the year,’ he said.

Finance Board elections are Feb. 25 and budget requests for the fall semester are due to the Finance Board by March 28.

In addition to budgetary matters, Chief of Staff Harris Sokoloff also showed the assembly the new events Web site, events.syr.edu, for all campus events.

‘This is not just for us,’ Sokoloff said. ‘This is for the student groups.’

Anyone hosting an event can fill out a form online at least 72 hours before the event and Sokoloff and a small team will review the requests for their accuracy and validity, Sokoloff said.

Vice president of Communications, Sharon Clott, discussed preliminary details for a new media policy that could go before the assembly for a vote next Monday.

‘The VP of Communications will take a heavy role in what gets distributed to the public,’ Clott said.

Stipulations of the policy mentioned included all members of the press having to submit e-mail requests for an interview with SA members and submit all quotes and statements being attributed to members to Clott for approval before they can be printed.

‘This is in order to provide accuracy and liability,’ she said.

Vice president of Operations John Gabel said the operations board has to look over the proposed bill before assembly members can vote on it and the board has the power to veto the bill.

‘There is a lot of contention with this issue,’ Gabel said.

Published on February 21, 2005 at 12:00 pm